I was a little intimidated going in, because we have a youth scholarship league that bowls on Tuesdays, and they bowl on the same shot that we will be bowling on in our sport league on Thursdays. My daughter bowls the league, so I get to be out there watching and "scout it out." With an average ratio of 1.4-1, by the numbers, it's really tough. Not many of the kids were playing it right, but the ones that were had to be really really accurate.
Well, there's good news and bad news with this pattern, but surprisingly a lot more good news than bad. It's 43 feet long, and a ton of oil. From watching the kids, I was able to figure out that angular ball motion was baaaad, but the oil volume was heavy enough that you could go about as aggressive as you wanted. You need a little "swing" to get a good angle to the pocket, because with as heavy as the oil is and as long as the pattern is, playing straight doesn't give the ball much time to rev up, or the midlane read zone is late, so playing straight makes the pocket "smaller," as far as carry goes. At the same time though, if you give it a little room and "spank" it at the bottom, it's a nice easy shot as far as getting the ball down the lane. You can play off the 5 board or off the 14 board, but you do have to be pretty accurate. However, a shot is REALLY easy to develop. I played 15-5 with my Brutal Nightmare, then when that started burning a little, I went 15-7, then 15-9, and when I finally had to move to more head oil around 17 or 18, I had the 5-9 board at the breakpoint. Shot 672 and had the high set in the league by 150 pins, so as bad as I've been throwing the ball so far this summer, I was really happy to put a number up like that on a 1.4-4 pattern. Of course, at the same time I shot 720 and 297-745 on the US Open pattern last year, so apparently heavy volume patterns work well for me however "tight" they are. Good week, we'll see what next week brings. 4 weeks, 205 average so far, hope it keeps going up.
