Being that he's speed dominant (vs somebody that's matched or rev dominate) I would say that most of stuff is drilled strong and then surface modified to make it read the lane the right way. Often you can catch a glimpse of the layouts on the stuff that he throws on the show usually they are in the 3.5 to to 4.5" range. Sometimes you could tell morich stuff was too strong and hit pretty weak on a few of the shows. Funny, if you read his responses to ball questions on his website, it's almost like he's playing dumb. His responses are are utterly generic and lack any technical substance (actually that's true of everything that's he's posted). Obviously he's a smart guy but I get the feeling he doesn't want to cloud his bowling with a whole lot of ball choice thoughts beyond getting it close. He just knows what general ball motion he needs to have on a given pattern to score. And ball motion is pretty easy for Walter as we all know most of his career he's kept it straight with small amounts of head belly. After that he just just fiddles more speed/loft/hand but still keeping it simple with a few balls that are close and just executes. In todays environment with volatility of the patterns and the speed they break down it seems to be a good strategy. IMO he's a different animal from most of the guys in that regard, say from a Jeff Carter who has 40 to 60 balls and tends to drill up a lot of equipment trying to find the absolute best ball motion for a given pattern. There nothing wrong with that either BUT it does give you more variables you have to factor in when your bowling. The more choices you have to make along the way it's easy to start second guessing yourself. Every time you make a choice it's a educated guess sometimes it's works and sometimes it doesn't. Interesting that the first national tournament Jeff won he didn't have to make any ball choices and he had a stable lane environment. He just needed to execute and he did.
The times I've seen Walter struggle the most is when the lanes won't allow him to play straight and you have to play more angle through the fronts in late blocks. But this isn't as much an issue today because the PBA formats tend to have the guys bowling more on fresh than on burn squad type conditions like at the open. I have to believe Walter has experimented with equipment with 'weaker' layouts, but don't know how successful he's been with it. Maybe he'll go to more two handed style in his 50's now to play in and open up the lane, LOL. He bowled almost the whole last block two handed in Baltimore on shark. In closing though I think Walters general his internal motto is just give me a decent mid lane read, a little ball motion on the back and I'll make it work.
