The Hater introduces a new coverstock and a new asymmetrical core design to the DV8 lineup. The new Hater weight block is a higher RG (2.539″), high total differential (0.054″), and high intermediate differential (0.024″) design that helps keep the Hater’s rough box finish from wanting to start too early and burn off too much energy. The new HK22-based Havoc Hybrid cover produces decent length for a shell that comes out of the box sanded at 500/1500 SiaAir. We had excellent traction in the midlane and good continuation at the back end in our testing. The more oil that was on the lane, especially in the front of the lane, the better the Hater rolled for us.

Cranker had the best reaction out of our three bowlers on the heavy oil pattern with the Hater. He could miss left into the heavier part of the pattern and still have enough traction for the ball to drive through the pins, while shots missed to the outside would come back to the pocket but lacked a bit of pin carry. The ball dug into the oil harder than his Trouble Maker, letting him cover more total boards. As the pattern started to break down, he could make smaller moves to stay in the pocket. This ball kept him a few boards right of where he was with the Hellcat XLR8 the whole time he bowled on this condition.

While Cranker could get his Hater to the pocket on the medium oil pattern with the box finish, his reaction was not as good as the other two bowlers, as the sanded surface wanted to start hooking a bit too ...