Way back in Juniors actually. This was the state pepsi tournament, and the winner of the tournament not only got a pretty nice sized scholarship, but they also got an expense paid trip to Jr. Gold to represent the state (usually around like 800 bucks in spending money). So probably the biggest tournament of the year for the Juniors. Due to the fact it was basically a qualifier for Jr. Gold, and the fact they wanted to see the Jrs struggle as much as possible (I specifically remember the tournament directors laughing at the shot they had put down), they decided to try and put down the most difficult shots they could come up with.
It was a 2 day tournament and the first day was 51 feet with somewhere around 40 ml of total oil across the lane. Needless to say nothing even wrinkled. Now I'm a firm believer in everybody is bowling on the same shot, so any shot is fair... but there was a problem. It just so happened that they were putting out SO much oil, that going accross 24 lanes, by the time the machine hit about lane 22, The machine had all but run out of oil. And 23 and 24 were actually quite dry. This was not made known until after the first day was already over, We didn't switch lanes (which was a travesty in and of itself) and so the people on 23 and 24 thought that was what everyone was bowling on. I finished the day in 6th place, 5 of the 6 people on 23-24 beat me. This seemed really unfair at the time.
My question is, would I have any grounds to stand on if I had tried to protest the lane conditions back then? I mean it quickly became obvious there was a machine malfunction, and there was a drastic difference in shots. Obviously its far too late to do anything about it now, but I'm just curious if that is actually something I would have had a valid complaint about.
Oh, and the 2nd day, was probably the most difficult shot I've bowled on in 20+ years of competitive bowling. Never got to see a lane graph of it (they never put any out and refused to show the jrs what they were bowling on) but watching where the ball was reacting rolling straight up the boards, the shot had to be something like a reverse christmas tree with varying distances of oil, if you tried to play straight up 15, the ball hooked shortly after the arrows, if you played up 5 the ball would skid well past the 2nd tracer boards. So my resulting decision was that it was a pattern where in the middle the shot was around 24-27 feet long, and on the outside the shot was 42-46 feet long. First time (and only time) in my life I've truly been upset with the shot a tournament has put down.
