If a player can play anywhere on the lane from going up 6 at the arrows (with an up the back release)... to crossing 20-25 at the arrows (with more axis tilt and rotation to get the ball to recover) with the same ball... meaning he can play anywhere in this zone with each of his balls (as in, he can do it with his Heavy Oil ball, Medium Oil ball, and Light Oil ball). This would be a very versitile player in my eyes... and hopefully your eyes too.

How would you build him an arsenal?

In most arsenals I see today, people have have their balls going from strong to weak with only like 3-4 boards seperating each one and they end up with like 5-6 balls.

Something like this:

Super Carbide Bomb (sanded to 320)
Ultimate Inferno (sanded to 800)
Raging Red Fuse (polished to 1500-2000)
Ultra Sonic (polished to 2000-3500)
Sonic X Pearl (polished to 3500-5000)
Power Groove Dry/R (polished to 3500-5000)

The above arsenal does seem cluttered eventhough each ball is a logical step down from the previous one. But wouldn't the above arsenal better serve a more "non" versitile player who say only has like one style, or hand release, or who can only play one line (or one area)... where as a "more" versitile player could get away with just having something like:

Ultimate Inferno
Raging Red Fuse
Sonic X Pearl
Power Groove Dry/R???

Now they're are bigger gaps between each ball in this 4 ball arsenal... but a more versitile player could make up for it, right? Or would it be too much trouble to have to do this?


Meaning for example, take this sweet little senerio: Say a player is bowling a 6 game tournament and the shot starts out as a little longer than Medium Oil shot that requires his RAGING RED FUZE while going up the boards and when that ball starts to hook too much on the backend he just moves his feet and eyes in about 4-5 boards and he's back in the pocket (where as a regular player would just change to a more lengthy ball and stay in the same spot)..........

Fast forward about a game later and after moving some more boards with the RAGING RED FUZE, now the shot has opened up some more and he's now playing a slight swing and after the ball starts going high, he stays with the same ball and moves in 4-5 more boards and he's back in the pocket (where as a regular player would just change to a more lengthy ball and stay in the same spot yet again)..........

Fast forward about another game later and after moving some more boards with the RAGING RED FUZE, now the shot has opened up alot more and he's still with the same RAGING RED FUZE, he's now playing a more inside swing shot and after that ball starts going high, he moves in 4-5 more boards and he's back in the pocket (where as a regular player would have just changed to a more lengthy ball and stay in the same spot yet again)..........

Fast forward about another game or two later and now he's gone thru about 4 games with the SAME ball and he's moved in about 15-18 total boards since the start of the 1st game.

Now that he's moved deeper inside, if he gets anymore deeper then he will be too far in than he prefers to play... so he picks up his Sonic X Pearl and knowing it is a good bit weaker than his big backending monster, the RAGING RED FUZE, he moves back outto the right several boards to make up for the difference and after he starts stringing strikes again, if the Sonic X Pearl starts going high, then he will just move a few boards back in to the left and so on, and so on, and so on, until the tournament is over and he's gone home with a 1st Place check of over $1,004,232 for a tournament that he only had to pay $35.00 to enter.

Basically, is it okay to have bigger gaps in your arsenal if you are a very versitile player... or do even very versitile players still need big arsenal's with just some slight differences when going from each ball to the next (with just 3-4 boards seperating each ball)?



Thanks!

For now let us use the V2 solid for this example and 3 total balls with medium oil. And just for this example lets say the balls all have a label drill. If you take the 3 balls and  put first 400grit sanded, the second 1000grit sheen and the third 1500grit polished, you would get 3 different reactions. A roll, an arc, and more of a skid flip. Could a good versatile bowler  get the same reaction from ball 2 as he got from ball 1 or 3? I think he can come close, but not as strong a reaction as the bowler could produce with his normal release throwing each ball.

Now if you were to drop the oil to say med-light to light, the  V2 solid on lighter oil does not work well. Now it would make more sense to have a balls for the lighter oils. More aggressive balls on light oil tend to exaggerate your errors or burn out.

So yes both would need many balls, the guy that can adjust better would get more range out of each ball. Just because you move doesn't mean you can maintain the carry. I know some bowlers that once they found a line that was scoring they would try to stay on that line for as long as possible for fear of losing carry.