More than normal is an understatement. Over half of the TV show positions were left handed.

Here's my take on the lefty debate.I am right handed let me play ten out 90% of time and only have to worry about balls.Most lefties hardly ever change lines just balls.Scroggins is a good example.Thats what he says he does.Its really hard to beat lefties playing there A game all the time.Most time when a lefty is on a show they play straighter lines.Whens the last time you seen a lefty play 4th arrow.Only one I really remember was the great Mike Aulby.The rightys sometimes have to loft the dang gutters.Most patterns gets toasted much quicker plus all the lane friction from right side.If leftys dont get shut out on some patterns they would always dominate.Nothing against Lefties just my observations.Faulkner vs Tackett showed that.When you can pipe it down 678 20mph you will be hard to deal with.Bet after wsob lefties will slow down.

Jason Couch, Ricky Ward and the old buzzsaw John Gant would usually move in and play by the 4th arrow.  Gary Faulkner is capable of doing that also and Parker Bohn III will do it if needed. 

I think the big thing to notice is that with the change of venue this year to the National Bowling Stadium in Reno, it has seemed to even out the playing field.  By that, I mean that it's allowing different players to really shine instead of the usual people we've seen the past few years (Belmo, Rash).  The other thing I've noticed is that the Bowling Stadium seems to be more friendly to lefties in many cases based on how the lanes have played there historically.

Even in 1998, that question came up during the Masters and Marshall Holman said something about the synthetics just favors them.  It favored Bohn so much that he shot 300 on the show.
Link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkZoqHK9OXM

Sounds like leagues I've bowled in before.

Scroggins said in an interview and confirmed by other lefties that on today's tour patterns, for the past few years if you wanted to cash or make shows as a lefty that you had to become a master of playing outside 5 because that is the only place a lefty is guaranteed to find head oil on the burn squads on tour.

As someone posted above, when the righties are forced to loft the gutter, the lefty head oil is gone from about the 6-7 board in on the late squads.

That's why when the lefties make a show, they play the gutter because that's where they have played all week.

The only way this will ever change in this discussion, if for someone to either develop a lane conditioner that a bowling ball cannot remove from the lane and thus you are forced to play the pattern or someone tries to develop patterns that have so much head oil, that it will hold up thru 8 game blocks and again you are forced to play the pattern.

I don't think either of those will happen any time soon.  But that would be the perfect solution.  For example:  if the bowlers could not modify the pattern with their equipment, a tournament director could create a pattern that forced the righties to play up 5 and it would never dry out.  When is the last time, that ever happened?  Both sides would have the same shot and it would never change.    That is the ideal solution that will never happen anytime soon.

But I think that is the goal.  The new Ice oil by Kegel is a step in that direction and bowlers have noticed that when their lanes change to that oil, the patterns last longer before transitioning.

I believe they used an Authority 22 with Brunswick Defy at the WSOB and there were new panels installed last summer.  Defy can be a very interesting lane conditioner with it's self heal.  If you watched the WSOB majority of righties were baffled by the 2 pin combo's they left during the transition and burn.  That has more to do with lefty dominance than anything. 

I see some of that same characteristics with the same machine and oil at my main house but the lane topography at that house is much worse.

All of these lefties were before the named tour patterns were created.
And back when on a certain weekly stop, you might have hook on the left and dead flood on the right or vise versa and that's when Gant or Steve Cook would make a show because they could overcome the flood with their hand.

I thought two handed bowlers were the problem not lefties.