Yes it occurs all the time. That is why it should not be legislated against. Why is it now getting this attention? Who decided this week was the week to call Mika out and question his practice session? To question his sportsmanship?
As I said before, You would have to ban plastic as well as sanded. So banning balls (or grits) wouldn't be fair. Practicing on another pair is only going to make our pros look bad on TV. If they don't have a feel for the lanes they are bowling on and how they transition the scores will go down in a hurry which makes our elite players look worse. So I don't like that idea.
Also to that subject, I don't think the players themselves would like this. Most of the PBA patterns play very, very tight when perfectly fresh. Most of the guys on the show wouldn't have the look they had all week during qualifying. Again, scores would go down in a hurry. This, at a time when scores are exploding in league play, would lend itself to more dwindling of the PBA fan base I think. The players and the tour cannot be in favor of that.
In the end, it is a battle of wits and determination. I don't like Russell's analogy of extreme examples of what would be bad etiquette in golf. As one member stated...this is more akin to whether golfers would continually attack a course in a certain way in hopes that it would either get easier for themselves, or more difficult or their opponents. And the answer to that is of course they would.
This isn't an example of bad etiquitte like those examples in golf. This is an example of someone doing something to create a competitive advantage. Nobody is looking at the thought that maybe the pattern already gave Rash/Belmonte an advantage. And if Mika simply practiced his preferred line he would have burned his own spot and opened the lanes up more for those guys. If you thought this was going to be how the pattern moved would you have done differently than Mika?
Cause what happens when the lanes open up like that? We have all seen it in leagues. The high rev palyers start to get the adult bumper bowling look. Which forces tweeners to jump left and have to attack the pattern like the crankers do. Well guess who wins 9 out of 10 times in this scenario.
So Mika decided to make them play HIS part of the lane instead of vice-versa. I applaud his intelligent strategy. And I maintain that the crankers need to understand this and try to figure out their way around it...just like tweeners have had to do for years when moving left.
On a side note...both Rash and Belmonte seen what Mika was doing and decided to move right with dull stuff and try to open the lanes up. As noted in the Bill O'Neil anecdote...this is the preferred practice of crankers...they want that wall. But nobody is on here bitching that they go out there week in and week out and destroy Duke or WRW's preferred line. So why are we discussing the fact that "the golden boys" line got some traffic across it in practice?
Just let them do what they have always done.
ALL STAR BOWLING & TROPHY
LANGAN'S ALL STAR LANES
IBPSIA MEMBER
WALLED LAKE MI
