It dawned on me the other day, that I bowled my first scratch tournament 46 years ago this month. I was throwing a Brunswick hard rubber ball, the only ball I owned at the time. I shot about 30 under for 6, and missed the cut, but I don't remember by how much. I know it took plus. I felt like I was in over my head a bit, but I immediately signed up for the next tournament before I had time to dwell on it. This one I remember well. I qualified 3rd with -7 and ended up winning the tournament on the back of a 4 game stretch in the finals where I shot 967.
The old technology probably jumps out at people reading this post, but the real difference was lack of knowledge and skills. There were only a handful of guys in any tournament who were versatile enough to play multiple angles from the gutter to 4th arrow. I didn't even have a ball that was balanced for static weight until 1974. Scoring was lower in those days,, not because the shots were more difficult, but because carry ebbed and flowed as you moved with the oil breakdown. You could shoot a 260+ game, and pound the pocket the rest of the day and not crack 220.
When polyester became appreciated in the 70's ( it worked much better on the new hard urethane lane finishes than it did on the lacquer of the 60's ) scoring took a big jump ( bigger than from urethane to resin in the 80's ). By the 70's the game really was no different that it is today. Half the guys were complaining about lane conditions being too easy, and the other half thought the cream came to the top on the higher scoring conditions. Older, straighter players like myself looked down our noses at the young crankers who struck all day but couldn't pick up a spare. Leftys either had a big edge, or they were shut out.
Urethane didn't really change the game much in the 80's, it just allowed even more power players to become dominant, because the oil patterns had gotten so short. I averaged nearly as much in league with urethane as I did a decade later with resin. Tournaments were a diffferent story. Only way to win over a 10-12 game tourney was to hook it a ton, or be able to play dead straight and stay outside. Us tweeners just couldn't carry with the crankers when the shot moved in.
Today I only see two things different than when I started the game all those years ago. One is bad the other is good. On the good side, the resin balls have allowed different styles to compete on a level playing field across a broad range of conditions. On the bad side the balls blow up patterns so quickly that nobody is really forced to play the shot as it is layed out for very long.
The many more award scores and super high averages have had no impact on the game from my perspective. The guy who executes the best in the long run wins whether it takes a 240 average or 210 average. In the short run you can get beat when a guy sprays the ball and gets lucky today just as I lost games when guys threw 3 or 4 brooklyns 40 years ago. People get frustrated with the game for the same reason they did 40 years ago. Usually it is not because the game is too easy for them, but because it seems to easy for the other guy.
