Lane Play and Consistency – Part 2

When we left Joe Bowler (in the March issue), he was being consistently inconsistent. In an attempt to improve his performance in the “transition” (second) game on those drier lanes, he changed to a ball which would go down the lane longer before reacting to the drier conditions.

He only has three balls in his arsenal including a plastic spare ball. The two high performance balls are a dull reactive solid and a reactive pearl which is highly polished. That is the ball to which he changed as the lanes broke down–not a bad decision. Since all the bowlers on that pair in that mixed league at 1p.m. were righthanded, the lanes broke down even more quickly than normal. He also made a parallel move to the left of five boards and found some oil to help hold the ball on line. Again, not a bad decision. Hopefully that logic will continue to work for him.

Review questions

Let’s look at some of those other questions which I posed in my last article which could cause an inconsistent performance.

In what part of the center is Joe bowling? Why is that important? Many centers have entrances on the left and right side so that lanes 1 and 2 and those on the far right receive more immediate effects from the outside environment. The constant opening and closing of the doors allows humidity and temperature to vary greatly in that area which can affect the lane conditioner AND the approaches. Believe it or not, it can also affect the hands of the bowlers, so the grip may be different.

Even the topography of those lanes can be affected and conditioner (oil) will be accepted differently on each lane. Joe Slowinski in his “Slowinski at Large” column discussed just that in detail in a previous issue of BTM. Talk about having difficulty reading lanes! I feel reading a bowling lane accurately is more difficult than reading the greens in golf (no intension of creating controversy).

How many of us have been in centers where lane 1 hooked more than lane 2 and all the other lanes? If you follow the PBA tour this year, you saw how difficult the ...