http://www.kegel.net/V3/PatternLibraryPattern.aspx?ID=602

Anybody have experience on this pattern lately? If so, what type of bowler are you and what types of equipment seemed to work the best for you? What type of lane surface was it on?

My state tournament is on this pattern, and one of the host centers is an older wood lane house, should be interesting! Im trying to gather as much info as I can on the tendencies of the pattern for my team. We are going to put it down in our home center, but wont be able to gather much from that because we have HPL's and the host centers have different surfaces.

Stopncrank

I totally agree that some sort of Kegel pattern should be used, heck Id like to see them use two different patterns, which ever one fits the lane surface for each host house.

But having said that, to have a successful tournament you need people who are willing to spend money, and lately the board hasnt done a good job of keeping everyone happy. Yes bowlers will complain, but also we cant complain about low turnouts and low payouts if noone shoes up to bowl either, so its pick your poison in this area. Tough shots scare off alot of bowlers, and you cant rely solely on those few who want tough shots to run a successful tournament. If everyone wanted tough shots the regional programs would be doing better.

I agree Mike that the economy is to blame somewhat, other times I feel our industry uses this excuse far too often, and us bowlers that do support stuff at some point have to hold the industry, national, state, and local board members accountable at some point. Any time a tournament has a poor turnout the first thing heard is "well the economy is so bad", turnouts have and were bad before the economy tanked.

There are those who like tough shots, and those who dont, and it makes it tough from a tournament directors point of view. Make them too hard and the donators wont come, make em too easy run off all the donators cause they cant keep up.

We have seen at our state level both sides of the too hard/too easy discussion, and the truth is right now I dont think anyone has a concrete solution.

Also keep in mind some of the ones that complain of each issue are the same people. We have some people that complain the house shot is to easy everyone can score.. They average about 215 or so and are in the near the middle of the league in average. Then they get on a tougher shot and complain this shot is to hard they can't shot 200.

Where I live all average range bowlers complain, its not limited to just 2teen average bowlers. Make em too tough everybody complains, make em too easy the handicap bowlers complain. Patterns aren't the answer by themselves its a combination of different things.

Even patterns that are supposed to be lower scoring end up being blown up eventually in longer formats, whats the point in making them "tough" when the pattern can be altered by 10 mins of practice from high level bowlers? There are just as many bowlers out there that say they want tough conditions...those same bowlers are the ones doing everything they can to give themselves as much "miss" room as possible during practice time as well as working with other bowler to break them down, than there are bowlers who complain.

Whats the point if the majority do this anyways? Need I mention Nationals as an example?