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It's the start of a typical Sunday for me: wake up, browse the net, wash up, and of course, go bowling at my local alley on a professional sports condition. I had been fortunate enough to come across this opportunity by a guy I've recently befriended and played for the first time on a professional layout. For those of you who don't know much about competitive bowling, there are special oil patterns laid out specifically for the pros to bowl on, which force them to be more versatile and accurate, while greatly diminishing their margin of error. These oil patterns are usually named after animals including the scorpion, cheetah, chameleon, viper, and shark. These shots are much more difficult due to the higher volume of oil and the placement of the oil.
Typical House Pattern
When you go bowling casually among friends, you would play on a typical house pattern. The pba description of a normal house shot is as follows:
Length: 38 - 40 feet
Description: A typical league-style, house pattern usually measures anywhere from 38 to 40 feet and is considered easy by PBA Tour standards. PBA events are not conducted using house patterns as they can inflate pro averages from 20 to 50 pins per game. The pattern places almost all of the oil toward the center of the lane which, when combined with a ball that hooks, creates a funnel effect where balls that are sent off their intended line are redirected toward the pocket.
In short, for those who utilize hook on the ball, you can shoot out and make a pretty large margin of error (about 5+ boards, or 3-4 inches) and still have the ball hook back. Because I'm used to these shots, I'll provide information on how I usually bowl in 3 different alleys:
At Facenda Lanes, I average 180+ because my lowest games are usually 170+, high 150 at the worst in addition to at least a couple 200+ games. I feel safe to estimate my average at around 180+ here. High game: 279
At Thunderbird Alley, the place I shot the chameleon just now uses wood lanes, so it's very different than the experience I have at Facenda Lanes, which uses synthetic. Here, I usually don't shoot too well, but my score is all over the place from 120+ to 200+, so I won't even try at estimating an average here. High game: 248
At Brunswick Zone, I have an actual sanctioned average since I bowl in a league now. My current average is 166, shot on alternating lanes. Official high game: 233
I would be pretty happy to claim those scores on professional shots. Today, I bowled specifically on a freshly oiled chameleon pattern. This lane condition, instead of being oiled heavily in the middle and lightly on the outside, utilize less oil in the middle. Even so, the sheer volume of oil is heavier compared to a house shot. Pba describes this pattern as follows:
Length: 39 feet
Description: The 2009-10 Chameleon maintains its tradition of utilizing a “retro” approach to pattern design. Instead of “smoothing out” the oil on the lane, increased volumes are placed in “zones” encouraging players to choose a specific area of the lane to play. This is a multiple-angles pattern allowing the bowler to choose what part of the lane best suites their particular game. The scoring pace remains medium to low as the primary challenge faced by bowlers is the large number of adjustments which are needed to move from “zone to zone”. Large moves, more than five boards at a time, are common to stay out of trouble and to conquer the Chameleon.
Technical points aside, I'll go on with how I bowled in 4 games with these scores: 161, 157, 149, and 170.
Analyzing those games, I was very surprised at how my ball reacted (obviously), since it was the very first time I shot on something different than a house pattern. Due to the higher density of oil, I would have thought my ball would hook very little but instead, I found a stronger backend, which helped my ball cut into the pocket far more than I had anticipated. What I had found, however, was that there was an extremely small margin of error to make. If I shot too far in, my ball would not hold and cut sharply in, having resulted in a snipe (1 pin) or gutter a few times. If I shot too far out, my ball would skid out too much and either gutter or leave ugly layouts of spares, making it difficult for me to find the right adjustment. Therefore, I tried to play as straight as possible, marking a specific target, but even the smallest sway off target would make me pay for my mistakes.
In conclusion, I found today's bowling to be a unique and satisfying experience. Even though my scores were not as great as on typical house shots, I was happy to see for myself how complex the sport of bowling could be when taken to a higher level. I will definitely try again next week and now that I have the first time experience under my belt, I am looking forward to doing even better the next time I bowl on this pattern. Thanks for reading!
sigh Ive got a 120 avg on house pattern.. 220 high
