Used grips for several years until about 6 years ago and then went exclusively without them till last year, when I decided to experiment and put them back a few balls.

They seemed to add revs and help me in the first game, but they also increased the number of times I would just plain yank the ball.  After several weeks I declared the experiment over and converted most of the affected balls back to no grips.

This season, I converted the remaining 3 balls to no grips, and I still liked these balls ....despite their age... and they seemed to be all wrong.  They're comfortable and yet I was dropping them sometimes and yanking them others, and finally decided to restore the grips....  just for those 3 pieces.

It worked and am throwing a better shot with them, but still intend to keep most of my other equipment without the inserts. I believe the pitches or something were off, and just decided that restoring the grips would minimize the effects of that more quickly that trying to convince the pro-shop there was an issue.

Just wondering if there is a good way to incorporate these balls into my mostly no-grips arsenal. Use them on fresh oil and switch to no-grip balls when the lanes are drying up, or start with no-grip balls and only pull out a ball with grips if I'm struggling and need a change to get me going?

This seems like a much dumber post now than when I started typing, but figure I'll leave it as is and see what kind of feedback I get anyway.

 

Oh...  what happened with the finger pitches was my fault mostly.

When I decided to revert the last 3 balls with inserts back to no-inserts, I told the driller that one of the balls with inserts was perfect and to use it as a basis for measurements without the inserts.

It WAS a perfect fit with the inserts, but that was a big mistake, cause without the inserts I have to believe some minor tweaks need to be made to the pitches and the span to allow for there being no "give" in the ball's material vs the rubber inserts.

Anyway...  when the balls had been reverted to no-grips, they just seemed flat.  Couldn't get any revs or even a good grip on them.  They were comfortable as I picked them up off the rack, but when it came time to throw them, something just wasn't right.

I can't blame the driller ----and he does fantastic work for me most of the time---cause I was the one who told him to use the ball with the inserts as a model.  And I didn't want to admit to him that it didn't work out, or go through a long process trying to find out what was off.  AND ----didn't want to pay for plugging and re-drilling, so decided to just accept that those 3 balls should remain with inserts..  It cost less to put the inserts back in than plugging would have been, and I alrready had wasted too much money on the oscillating.  AND yet I still like those balls and want to continue to use them.

But the short answer is....  I messed up by not insistting on the driller using whatever measurements were on file for me ....OR bringing in another ball (with no-grips) and having that one used as the model.

You were right, the post is way dumber than you thought.  You "yank" shots whether they have grips in them or not.  Work on your timing and freeing up your armswing instead of obsessing over minute things like this and worrying about what score you shoot in practice.