Geico Plastic Ball Recap
     Hello everyone,
     This week we were back in Denver for the Plastic Ball Championship.  The PBA is providing everyone with 50th anniversary balls that are the same.  We’re able to lay them out however we want, and do whatever we feel we need to the surface of the ball.  The weight block is basically the same pancake shape that you see in house balls, and most plastic balls.  The idea is to give everyone the same technology, and bowl on a level field.  I guess this is sort of a throwback type tournament.  The only problem is that we’re bowling on oil that is much slicker that anything that was used back when the plastic ball was the current technology. We might see anything for this week from lower scores to shootout depending on what they do with the pattern.
     We were able to bowl on the pattern on Tues. afternoon.  Mark usually runs some pairs for us the day before the TQR to get the machines running, and give us a little practice time.  We were told before practice that we couldn’t use the balls we drilled for the tournament until the official practice session.  This left me with only my sponsor spare ball to use for the plastic version of the pattern.  It seemed like the normal Cheetah just with lower volume.  When I say the normal Cheetah, I’m referring to the original Cheetah that you could actually hook it back from the gutter as advertised.  
     The TQR was bowled on a regular volume of Cheetah, since they were allowing the players to use whatever equipment they wanted to use.  The qualifiers then had to drill new balls for the tournament.  Once that was finished, we bowled the official practice session.  What I saw was going to be a tougher version of the pattern.  I basically had three balls drilled.  One was just a normal over the label layout.  I had another drilled leverage, and one more between the two.  There wasn’t going to be much difference between them, other than a little different break point.  The label ball was sanded with 1000 abralon, and the others were box finish.  I had a pretty good look with the label layout, and had to keep a soft hand, and keep the shot up the lane.  Based on this pattern, the scores should be low to moderate, and I’m looking forward to having to keep the ball in play.
     The next morning in practice, it seemed that the potential scoring pace was unacceptable, and there seemed to be a significant modification done to the lanes.  There was way more friction to the right, and there were way more strikes from the start than we saw the whole practice session.  Not only did the ridiculous amount of hook to the right create more strikes, it also made the high rev rate players dominate.  We went from a pattern that favored some sort of speed control, and accuracy to a pattern that favored hitting is as hard as you could, and sending it to the dry.  This doesn’t mean that the high rev players could throw it completely normal, but the bowlers around me that hooked it a lot had a much more normal ball reaction.  Even with this type of reaction, the number to the top 32 wasn’t moving fast, and I was able to keep up with it for a while.  Mostly, my strategy was to try to bump up against the dry and not give the pocket away too much.  When I did get it right too quick, it over-reacted.  I was really seeing the lane as wet/dry, which isn’t my strong suit.  I think that explained why the high rev players could match up better.
     For the next block, I tried to use more surface to blend out the wet/dry.  I used 500 grit abralon, and leaned on it pretty hard.  One thing that I noticed was that no matter what surface I used, the first one or two shots hooked off the lane, and then it settled down a lot.  The night block was more of the same for me.  I had them wet/dry, and was struggling to get the ball to come off the spot the right way, while I watched the high rev guys have a ton of recovery.  The one thing that I didn’t want to fall into was starting to hit up on the ball, and try to over hit it to get the shot to look right.  I didn’t want to possibly get my timing off for the rest of the swing, which includes the Marathon next week on every pattern.  I finished the tournament pretty low in the standings, and was disappointed in my performance.  I was really looking forward to this week, and I thought speed control and accuracy was going to be at a premium.  It was to a point, but it took me too far from my comfort zone to worry enough about it since it was hopefully the only week we’ll see this.  I think one of my bigger disappointments was that the PBA decided to give us a lot more help than I think we needed on the lanes.  The only thing I think this proved was that there is a condition for every ball.  I don’t think it looks right when we have a throwback type tournament, with less technology, and it outscored the ultimate scoring tournament.  One of these tournaments didn’t come out right, and I can’t be sure that it wasn’t both of them.
     Next week we have the Marathon Championship.  We’ll be bowling on every pattern plus the Earl Anthony pattern during the week.  I’m hoping this tournament will go better, since I’m looking forward to that one as well.  Not only will it be a test of versatility, but I’ll be able to put the entire 900 Global/AMF line to use again.
                                  Thanks,

                                  Steve

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900 Global/AMF  Sales Manager