Picking the Best Bowling Balls for Your Arsenal

Well, let's talk about tournament arsenal. We'll use Blake. We've got a great bowler, he's really versatile. He's got a lot of options with speed, with his hand positions, you can do a lot of things on the lanes. He's competing regularly on the college circuit for the university.

Tell us a little bit about putting data in arsenal, what he's going to do to compete Well, you know, like any, you know, up-and-coming bowler, you know, they, they love to have bowling balls. So that's, that's pretty apparent, you know, with kids today. But with Blake's arsenal, what we tried to do is control the length of where we want that core to start up. So we look at, you know, the RG's of a ball. We look at whether the ball is going to spin up early in the lane, or in the mid part of the lane, or really late down the lane.

We look at those, you know, type of core constructions first. And then we look at covers and the covers characteristic. We look for the, the cover to have more of a flippy type of reaction or more of an archetype of reaction. And then we try to blend those shapes of coverage stocks, you know, types. And then we adjust the surfaces accordingly.

So in his tournament bag, he may have a bag set up for long, medium, and short length, you know, of the travel of that ball, but we'll adjust the covers on them to bring them in or push them down the lane. And then it might be an arche bag. In the flippy bag, we'll do the same exact thing. This way, when he's bowling, he can start with a ball that gives him a nice motion. And then as Elaine's transition starts to dry up, we can go to the next motion in the opposite bag.

So if we start off with an arche ball, we'll go to the flippy ball next, that gets to the same length. This way, we can control that back-end reaction. Yeah, so you're giving them a set of tools, it sounds like, that whenever the lane condition transitions, he doesn't have to do a lot with his physical game, perhaps. He can maybe just change the ball and then go be successful right away. Yeah, it's just a small movement is what we really want to be.

We want to, you know, control that environment left to right. But we're really trying to do is manage that control down lane, you know, and when the necessity for the ball to be a little stronger, we can go to it with the core strength, you know, and the cover is already prepped for that. Yeah. So to add one more piece, we're talking about the bowlers' characteristics, you're talking about the equipment, setting it up for him, but also the environment you're going to go compete in. That's going to affect which bags you take, maybe how you set up your stuff, right?

Absolutely. You know, in college bowling, we've almost, you know labeled it the mystery equipment because we have to select the equipment prior to the actual, you know knowledge of what the pattern is. So we have to be prepared for everything. So we purposely prep certain things for certain stages of a game based on certain scenarios. So we really, really look at the information of the core and the cover stock, its characteristics, as really being a helpful aid in controlling that environment.

once we get on it. Yeah, with a player like Blake, it's easy to see that as versatile as he is, it can be pretty easy to set up a bag for him and give him the great options that he needs to go be competitive. And if you know a little bit about what's coming up with the environment, there's really no way that he's not going to be prepared when it comes time to play. Absolutely. You know, maintenance is very, very critical for the equipment and a lot of...

you know, polishing, a lot of sanding, a lot of crosshatching, changing different ways of how we stay on the ball. And then just absolutely cleaning in between every shot. That's important. Yeah, the maintenance is going to make a big difference from shot to shot, especially throughout the length of the competition. So, be prepared, have all your tools together, make sure your players are aware of what they need, and put together the best arsenal that you can for your players to be successful.