We just got finished with the first night of PBA Regional Pattern 5 on our summer PBA shot league and thought some might be interested in a report of how the two Machines were doing. I apologize in advance for any boredom these meanderings might cause. (g)

Regional 1
I only had the Machine at this time, but if I'd been throwing it better I probably would have cleaned house. I always try to figure out which of the current National PBA shots the old Regional patterns match up to and I guess this one is either most like Chameleon, or not like any of the current patterns at all. Anyway, the hardest thing to cope with on this pattern were the flying -- and I mean flying -- backends. I usually had to put the Machine back in the bag midway through the set, but with the entry angle I was getting, I'd kill when I was in the pocket. Both 200 games I shot on this pattern came with the Machine.

Regional 2
This was and is the Cheetah pattern. I'll go on record right now as saying I hate this pattern and probably would struggle with anything I used on it. Our house apparently turned out a very light volume Pattern 2. What happened is that anything outside of about 8 was completely OB, while anything inside 8 was jumping too hard. When I say I bowled a couple of 160s with the Machine, it's a compliment, because I averaged a nice 131 for nine games on this pattern. (My average on the other four patterns is about 170.)

Regional 3
Loved it. I guess this is the Viper pattern. I had a 580 for my highest series of the summer and, yes, the Machine was involved in that. The transition on this pattern was much smoother than either 1 or 2. The Machine has backend for days anyway, and didn't need the help it was getting on the first two patterns. Here, the little extra on the back made it easy to kick out the tens. I wish I could bowl a whole league season on this pattern.

Regional 4
I guess this would be a modified Scorpion. Most everyone I talked to hated it, but I fared very well. Probably helping my performance was the fact I got my Mean Machine the second week we were on this pattern. There are 2-to-1s at the back of the pattern and the best play I could find was straight up the boards with an old Storm X-Factor Deuce. The Machine really didn't like the pattern much and got squirty. The Mean Machine, though, allowed me to play a little bit  of a swing shot. The shot broke down like this: In the first game of a set, the Deuce worked fine because the backends were clean. As soon as carrydown hit, though, the Deuce would start coming in light, but since my Deuce is polished up a good bit, I couldn't move in because it would never turn the corner. Going outside just got me into fresh 2-to-1s. So the first move was actually to a more aggressive ball (the Mean Machine) to get some turn in the back once carrydown started. I ended up averaging 170 on this pattern, which was very good for someone of my limited abilities.

Pattern 5
This is most akin to Shark. It's a great pattern to play if you can play deep inside angles with consistency (I can't), or you have mega hand (I don't). For the rest of us tweener-hell guys, the best thing to do is to play direct off the corner with no swing until the shot breaks down. Again, I started out with something less aggressive (Storm Paradigm 11" pro pin, drilled to hook/set), then move to the Mean Machine and then finally to the Machine. To be honest, I struggled with the Mean Machine this first week but it was mostly my fault for not reading my adjustments quickly enough. I closed well with the Machine (172), though, and had a great look the entire third game, so I'll know what to do next week.

In conclusion, without these two balls I would have been without valuable options, and Pattern 5 would have been virtually unplayable for me.

Jess

Thanks. Hope I wasn't boring anyone. I find the PBA Regional Shot leagues to be the most entertaining thing I've done in this sport in years but since I'm not a true top-level bowler I don't know if people want to hear about my experiences on the shots or not.

Jess

Updating...

We had our second night of Pattern 5 tonight, and I had one of my best nights of the summer using primarily the Machine/Mean Machine combo.

This pattern, for the second week in a row, has shown OB to most everyone outside of 10. You have to be a true, honest-to-goodness rev fanatic to work outside 10 with most equipment.

The Mean Machine is not "most equipment."

I started with it in practice and it turned this pattern into a house shot look. It also helped even out the transition, which on Pattern 5 has been a problem for a lot of us. Nonetheless, I saw something I liked with my Storm Depth Charge at the end of practice and decided to start with it.

Had I been able to maintain the lines I was playing during practice, it might have been the right call. As it was, I struggled. I was sitting with 22 in the third frame after three opens and put the Depth Charge up. I switched to the Mean Machine, went 9/XXX through the seventh frame and ended up with 168 in the first game. I followed that up with a 175 (all Mean Machine) in the second game, then switched to the Machine for game three and shot 172 for a 515. That probably isn't much to some of you guys but it made me second-high on our pair tonight. Both Machine-line balls gave me a lot more room for error than my teammate or competitors were getting with their equipment.

It should also be mentioned that in addition to this being on Pattern 5, I had one guy throwing plastic off the corner (and shooting 514 with it, too -- very accurate, older bowler) and a beginner kid humming a Scout Reactive right up the middle of the lane. So our pattern wasn't breaking down the same way I'm used to these patterns breaking down.

Jess