Last night's league was quite an eye opener for me. The house has synthetic lanes and has always put down a typical house shot. I am fairly new to bowling so I can not provide details about the exact pattern, but it was dry outside the 10 board and flooded in the middle.
My first ball during practice was straight up the 10 board to see how oily the lanes were. Normally at this house, my ball would hook into the pocket 9 times out of 10. Not tonight, instead it just sailed down the lanes and manybe moved to the 11 board by the time it reached the pins.
My teammates and the other teams were having a similar reaction and the bit*hin* began. The best bowler on my team, who normally throws the big hook ball, can't get his ball to come back if it goes out past the 10 board. He is pissed.
Anyway, I found a line in practice that worked for me. Straight up the 3rd arrow and my ball would hit the pocket and carry very well. Normally I will play straight up the 2nd arrow at this house or a swing shot from 25 to 15 depending on the night.
All three games all I hear is whining. I shot above my average the 1st game, below the 2nd and above the 3rd. Our best bowler had a 345 series, and he has a 180 something average! I shot around 500 so I was happy with my performance.
No one was making sizeable adjustments, either they didn't know how or didn't want to. I have the feeling that if this new shot is laid out again next week, some people will quit. By the 3rd game last night we had some people picking up house balls and chucking them at the head pin because they could not find a line to the pocket with their strike ball. All this whining and the shot was still fairly easy, there was still a flood in the middle of the lane so if you missed your mark left it would hold...but there was no room to miss to the right.
Someone said that a person came from ABC and inspected our shot and said it was too easy, thus the new pattern last night. I heard this second hand but I hope to find out the specifics soon.
Its amazing that you can put some oil outside of the 3rd arrow where there normally is very little and 9 out of 10 bowlers in this league shot less then a 400 series. I enjoyed myself because it was a challenge for me to target a different place in the lanes than normal. If I missed my mark by more then one board to the right, it had no hope of getting back. I am guessing that this is similar to a sport shot. It sure showed me how hard it is to hit a 1-2 board area shot after shot instead of a 3-5 board area with the wall.
Alto
