The Angle was introduced in 1981. You can add a couple of years to that and since then, very few PBA tournaments have seen plastic being thrown except for spares. Who is still around from that time? WRW/PDW/Duke/Baker.
What were conditions like in the 70's (when plastic was the ball of choice)? Much higher friction surface (wood) with lower viscosity oil and lower volumes of oil. In the 80's, we saw the virtually the same conditions along with shorter oil to go along with it. Alot of league bowlers continued to use plastic in the 80's due the the free hook for better than half of the lane.
On the other hand, I would assume most pros have used plastic for practice just to work on accuracy and/or release issues. So they do have experience. But where has this experience come? I would guess on burnt out conditions where there is still free hook, even with plastic.
I have enough experience on the old Cheetah to figure that hardly anyone could bank the ditch with plastic, including Smith/Jones/Couch. Now if it is true that the new Cheetah is less forgiving, it's going to be harder to get much hook. If that's the case, I think the key, outside of the accuracy issue, is the ball roll. Based on that, I think there are 2 exempt players that have the ideal roll for success with plastic - Chris Barnes and WRW. Both have that high track and can stay behind the ball to get it into a good early roll. Oh yea, and both are pretty accurate. Between the 2, I would give the advantage to Barnes due to his rev rate.
One other think to remember, the lanes are not going to open up, in fact they are going to get tighter with the carrydown created by plastic.