We've all gone through that phase where we want to watch the ball do tricks at the end of the lane, so much so that it almost becomes secondary to scoring.

Some of us can actually bowl effectively with a skid/snap arsenal. If you are one of those people, hat's off to ya. You're basically like the men that have full heads of hair at age 90 while the rest of us look like ambulatory eggs.

I was thinking about this the other day and realized that, in my entire bowling life, I've basically had great luck with all of three (3) reactive pearl bowling balls: A Storm X-Factor and a pair of Storm Paradigms.

The X-Factor, I used back when I still used a wrist brace and threw the ball completely differently than I do now. The Paradigms aren't like any other pearl I have. One of them is roughed up to about 1000 grit. The other is a Pro-Pin ball that doesn't act like anything else I've ever thrown.

Of the rest of the reactive pearls I've owned, only one -- an Ebonite Ice -- I've ever had longterm success with. A lot of the others have been great for spurts here and there, but I've never been able to get consistent success over a long period of time.

Polished solids tend to work a lot better for me. In fact, I kill with them. Particle pearls are a little better than reactive pearls in my hands, but it's not universal.

What I'm seeing, in my own game, is that balls drilled to arc more than snap lead to substantially higher scores over the longterm. Consistency goes up by a huge factor. My ability to impart changes in my delivery and see them come to fruition downlane is much easier.

I want to try a Thunderstruck Pearl with a Rico drill on it to complement my Thunderstruck Solid with a Rico drill, but outside of that, someone needs to keep a choke-leash on me and whenever I get the urge to buy a pearl, snatch really hard.

On a side note, I don't know how many times I've been standing in someone's pro shop when a teenager comes in to buy a ball and the pro shop guy asks "what do you want the ball to do?", and the kid responds with, "I want it to go as long as it can and then go sideways" or something similar. And then they go struggle with it.

Besides, isn't a solid taken to around 2000 or 4000 Abralon and then heavily polished about the same thing as a pearl, anyway?

Jess