This article is by PBA Hall of Famer Johnny Petraglia.The article was written in 2001.
The article is very detailed and long.WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Here's the simple truth: Sport Bowling is not the answer
I WANT TO MAKE ONE THING VERY clear: I love bowling. I'm extremely concerned about the continuing escalation of scores and how it hurts bowling's credibility as a sport. I'm as much in favor of scores going down as anybody. However, I fear we're taking the wrong steps to correct the problem by rushing to judgment with Sport Bowling, which is characterized by a strict, universal lane oil condition that is being implemented by bowling's governing bodies.
Let's consider why Sport Bowling is touted as the answer. The American Bowling Congress and its executive director, Roger Dalkin--for whom I have the greatest respect--are under a lot of pressure to lower scores. Although the ABC sanctions balls and pins as well as lanes, lane sanctioning historically has been the most important aspect of the organization. That's not wrong, but that emphasis means other factors that affect scoring are overlooked.
There's a growing worldwide sentiment that there should be one standard lane condition for all to play on. I know it's a response to the cry to make lanes fair for everyone--righthanders and lefthanders, heavy rollers and spinners. But what makes bowling great is the inherent variety of playing conditions. It leads to the kind of clubhouse discussion that makes players into legends: Who's the best on the easy conditions? Who's the best on the tough ones? Who's the best on the gutter? On the fifth arrow? Who can dominate from anywhere?
Specifying a universal lane condition would be like mandating that every golf course in the world be the same. You'd never truly test the skills of the players. Why? It's because the one major flaw of bowling--which is nobody's fault--is that, unlike other sports, a tough condition isn't equally tough for everyone. Bowlers stick with one specific technique, no matter what condition is put down.
A universal condition would entrust one person or organization to decide which technique would succeed and which would fail. And who is smart enough, fair enough, or unprejudiced enough to make that kind of judgment? Hundreds of thousands of bowlers should determine the ideal technique through actual performance. That's what I fear won't happen if we have a uniform lane condition. Sport Bowling is the first step toward that end.
Admittedly, lane conditions today are designed to accommodate the higher-average bowlers and their $200 bowling balls; unfortunately, that's only a small percentage of participants. What happens to the rest of the bowling population--for instance, kids 11 and 12 years old or senior citizens, who use 10-, 11- and 12-pound plastic house balls with conventional grips? These bowlers play with the same equipment that was used 20 years ago, on lanes conditioned for someone throwing proactive equipment that could break 30 boards. They're being asked to compete on conditions a hundred times tighter than they were 20 years ago. It's the equivalent of asking them to play against Tiger Woods at Pebble Beach with only a 5-iron.
If you doubt this, all you have to do is take a ball that was the top of the line 10 years ago and roll it down a freshly oiled lane. That ball is going to hydroplane 60 feet. Imagine what a plastic ball will do on the same condition! No matter how good a bowler's mechanics and execution, the ball is never going to hook, and it's never going to get to the pocket.
I can't tell you how many hours I've spent teaching junior bowlers proper form and delivery, and then had to explain why their balls won't hook when they're doing everything I ask. All I can tell them is that they need a different, more expensive ball for that to happen. In the meantime, they see the scoring gap between themselves and bowlers with better equipment getting wider and wider, and their frustration grows.
If a sport lane condition designed to reduce hooking is laid down, the situation will get even worse because lower-tech balls will never "match up" with a sport condition. ("Matching up" refers to the way a bowler's style, equipment, and amount of hook combine to satisfy what a lane condition dictates must happen to maximize hit and carry.)
Here's an example of how crucial matching up is to success: I rolled a perfect game on national TV back in 1994, even though minutes before airtime I couldn't get close to the headpin with the ball I'd used all week. Ray Edwards, Brunswick's ball rep for the tour, handed me a ball I hadn't touched during the tournament. That's what I used for the 300.
I bowled against another lefthander in that match, Eric Forkel. He used the ball he'd thrown all week and scored around 190. No one else on the telecast broke 200, including Walter Ray Williams Jr. and Dave and Dale Traber. If I hadn't switched balls right before the show, I wouldn't have, either. The 300 had nothing to do with the lane conditions that day. It had everything to do with what was in my hand and how that ball reacted to the lane condition. That shows you how important matching up is.
Back in the days of hard robber or plastic balls, matching up was not that important because there were fewer equipment choices. The greater variety of balls today makes matching up more critical to success. Matching up can affect the outcome of any competition between two equally talented players.
And matching up is just one concern. We must also consider how a sport condition affects lane topography. The PBA lane men tell us that as little as 20/1,000ths of an inch completely changes a lane. The more critical the lane condition, the more prominence the variance assumes.
What happened at this year's Senior Masters illustrates this point. The tournament featured a sport condition pattern, and it took a score of 67 under to make the top 64. One of every four bowlers in the field averaged 197 or better. Given that bowlers with all kinds of styles made the cut, you might think that this proved the sport condition produced a level, true-scoring playing field. But once match play began and bowlers were confined to a specific pair of lanes the same way a league bowler is, it was a very different story. One pair of lanes could yield a 780-750 match, and on the pair directly to the right a bowler would win 580-550. Same condition, same house--vastly different results from pair to pair.
The only way to explain the discrepancy is that the condition magnified the variances in lane topography, something that was disguised during the qualifying when players bowled on all the lanes in the house. This difference showed up within pairs, too. We had a situation where Dave Soutar beat Dave Davis, 804-616. It was obvious that on this particular pair, while Soutar wasn't bowling on a stringent sport condition any longer, Davis was. The variance in lane topography affected the contest more than it should have; in fact, the sport condition amplified the variance.
Right now, use of the sport condition is optional. I suppose that could work if the proprietor is willing to invest in the necessary equipment and personnel and restructure his league schedules to allow time to strip the house condition and put down a sport condition, then strip the sport condition and put back the house condition for the next league--if bowlers are willing to start their leagues a half-hour later to accommodate the switches. However, that's a lot of "ifs" to ask of a proprietor already pressed to meet customer demands.
The alternative is to use Sport Bowling as the one-size-fits-all house condition. I fear that will drive even more people away from bowling than we have already--not only the kids and the seniors I've already mentioned, but middle-aged adults, too, and for the same reason: frustration.
Let me illustrate with another golf analogy. Let's say the golf industry decided to make the hole cup the size of a dinner plate because its leaders thought more people would play if it were easier to shoot the ball into the cup. Inside of a generation, all the golf pros would shoot in the 50s, because they all would have titanium shafts, perimeter-weighted clubs, balls that would fly farther, and a cup the size of a dinner plate.
People would start complaining that they wanted a return to the old par golf. So a golf course architect would be hired and told, "We want you to get par back to 72. But you can't touch the cup, the clubs, or the balls." That architect would grow the rough eight inches high, make the fairways more narrow, put in a lake here and a trap there, and make the greens lightning fast. The result? The course would be back to a par 72. In addition, everybody would hate playing golf.
Why? Because all of a sudden you would be asked to play at Woods' level, on his conditions (but without his equipment), every week for 36 weeks. And after that, you'd be expected to sign up for another 36 weeks of torture on the same condition.
Would you be happy about that? I doubt it. You wouldn't mind playing on this condition every once in a while, just to see what it's like to be a pro, but you wouldn't want your brains beaten in every week for 36 weeks--and have to pay for the privilege!
All the golf industry would have to do would be to shrink the cup back to normal size, change the balls or the clubs, and leave the course alone. It's the same with bowling. If bowlers are allowed to play their own games, to their own ability level, then whoever is more highly skilled and has better execution will win. Sport Bowling doesn't allow that to happen. It makes bowlers play--match up--to a predetermined formula. What's worse, it makes it possible for a lesser-skilled bowler to beat a great talent like Williams, because it prevents Walter Ray from playing his own game. It would be like a 12-handicap golfer--the equivalent of a 190-average bowler in our game--beating Woods in a round of golf.
I saw how this could happen in our game at this year's PBA Orleans Casino Open, which was played on a sport condition. Walter Ray rolled a 148 game to my right while I was carding a 161. To my left, Wayne Webb was posting a 136. Can you imagine the outcry if the same thing had happened in golf, with Tiger shooting 90 or more? You can bet the PGA would never return to that course!
Keep the current lane condition guidelines. Change the pins and the bowling balls instead. If the pins are as heavy as they've always been, make them even heavier--four pounds apiece, if need be.
How will that affect things? Well, say a righthander averages 185. Because the pins are heavier, he's going to leave one extra 10-pin every game. (A lefthander, of course, would leave the 7-pin.) A 185-average bowler misses about one of every seven spare attempts, and you've just given him an extra spare to shoot. So, his average likely will go down by 10 pins--to 175--without changing anything except the weight of the pin. You've just changed the scoring environment without touching the lanes.
Couple a change in pin weight with some equipment restrictions, and we can bring scoring down 20 pins a game! We can't stifle technology, but we can certainly restrict how a ball is drilled or manipulated. We can require pin placement to be no more than a half-inch outside the grip, outlaw extra holes, and forbid changing the bull's original surface. There are many ways to manipulate equipment and make it tougher to knock down pins.
Changing pins and balls also reduces the potential for cheating. Once a four-pound pin becomes standard, it's what a proprietor has to buy. Once the extra hole is outlawed, it's easy to tell if a ball is in compliance.
But how do we stop an unethical proprietor from cheating on a lane condition? Anyone can say, "Oh, yeah, I'm offering the sport condition for this league" and not do it, cheating his bowlers out of something they're paying for.
If we change pins or balls instead of lane conditions, bowlers can still get the ball to the pocket if they make a good shot. At the end of the day, they'll be able to compare their performances to that of a Williams or Robert Smith more equitably (because the pros will be bowling with the same pin and equipment restrictions) and say, "If only I could have carded a little better" or "If I just could have made my spares."
Bowlers will better appreciate why the pros are so good at what they do and recognize that their errors come from within. They'll realize they need to get in better condition, become better versed technically, and practice more to get to the professional level. Most important, with pin and ball changes as opposed to lane condition changes, the lesser-skilled bowler never beats the Williamses of the world. Never. And isn't that what we're trying to achieve?
If we decide juniors and seniors need lighter pins, fine--we can make that allowance. We can keep the lighter pins for them and go to the heavier ones for regular adult competition. It should take no more time to change sets of pins than it would to strip and put down a sport condition between leagues and reverse the procedure afterward. Making changes to the pin and ball restrictions, and not the lanes, is the way we should be going right now.
If pin and ball changes prove not to be the answer, then, of course, changes in lane conditions can be investigated. But there's been too big a rush to implement Sport Bowling. The industry's job is to get people back into bowling, and keep them there. I ask of all those involved: Don't put down a condition that makes that impossible.
Johnny Petraglia is a PBA Hall-of-Famer with 18 career titles.
