Ball Reaction and Surface Adjustments

Hi, my name is Richard Shockley with the BowlersMart company and USB certified gold coach. Today, we're going to show a little bit about ball surface and ball reaction. This is Dan Triske, he's a silver level coach. He's going to be our thrower today to show you the motion of the bowling ball. Dan, you know what?

We have a shiny ball here and you're gonna be throwing some. What do we see from ball motion whenever we have a shiny ball, usually? Typically, coach, when we're using a shinier ball, we see the ball get down lane further. But one of the other effects of having a shinier ball is once it exits the oil pattern it has a tendency to be a little bit stronger on the back end. So you see a little bit more motion or angle.

So what we're going to do here is explain a little bit about our pads, Dan, we've got different surfaces, and what they look like. So for as an example, we have a thousand Abralon pad, a 500 Abralon pad and a 360. So the lower the number you go, the more surface or the stronger reaction you're going to get out of the bowling ball. And depending on what surface of the lane conditions are that you're bowling on, kind of determine on what surface you want on the ball itself. So if you're on a sport shot, obviously we need to make adjustments.

Right, right. So what we're gonna do now, is Dan's going to be throwing some shots, the same part of the lane, same speed to show you what the differences can be in surface management. So what we're gonna do also is we're going to surface this ball down. Correct. So what we're gonna use is.

So now we're gonna go to a thousand. Show the thousand and how we run it down. So we're gonna take a thousand on this. And once we can take this nice, shiny cover off that ball and you're going to see as we go that she's gonna get a little bit duller as we go and we're doing this. And this is something that, again, if you have the luxury to do at tournaments or before league, especially if you know what you're bowling on is very, very, very important to be able to make these surface adjustments.

'Cause we don't know what the amount of volume is. We don't know a lot of times with the length of the oil is. Right, I see you're just working that around the entire surface, and any particular pattern, Dan? Well, right now we're going to, I'm going with the track but we got to remember too, the rule is is we have to do the entire bowling ball. Not just where the bowling ball itself is on the lane.

All right, I think we're pretty good. Okay, so we're ready with this surface and let's let Dan go out and throw some. Okay, so we showed a great shot with a shiny ball, Dan. You threw it, you hit your break point. You had the same speed, same rotation, flush strike.

And you resurfaced it. We went down to the next level of grit which was a thousand. What happened from that? You saw what was going on with ball motion. So now when we put the thousand and we took that shiny cover off the ball, or that polish cover off, now what ends up happening is that ball got down lane but it reacted a little bit earlier.

So it was stronger going into the pocket. And a result of that was almost leaving a four nine because of how strong that ball was entering the pocket. Okay Dan, so let's go to the next level down on our pad, a 500, and you put some surface on it then we're going to really go out and see some ball motion difference. And what's most likely gonna happen with this, coach, when we put the 500 on this and for the people watching it's a very strong likelihood that this, after it's done will not even hit the head pin at all. And if it does, it's gonna be barely but most likely it will not hit the head pin.

And you're gonna stay in the same spot, same location, same release, same rev rate, access rotation, all the same. Same everything. I'm not going to change anything up. We're going to go it exactly like we did. That's because you're a great bowler.

We're gonna go exactly like we did the first time and the second. But it's gonna be good for the people at home and watching this, to see how important surface adjustments are and what they will do. Wow Dan, by just dropping down from a thousand to 500 really showed a lot of ball motion difference. Could you see that? You know what coach?

That ball runs the lane a lot earlier than where we initially started with the shiny and even a thousand. And it really, so now we ended up going to Brooklyn or heavier in the cross on the left side of the head pin. Right, so now let's drop down to a 360 pad. Work it over Dan, then we're gonna show another shot and what's gonna happen with that. When we take this down, it's gonna look a lot different than it does now.

As we're, when we put this 360 on there, the ball is going to react earlier on the lane, which is gonna make it actually miss the head pin through the left. 'Cause it's going to be a lot stronger. And, like I said, it's going to read the lane a lot earlier. And you know, coach, as well as I do how important surface adjustment is when we're bowling in tournaments and even in league play. Right, league play or in sport shots, particularly, like at junior goal with the kids, have to manage their surface a lot which is a tremendous changing in ball motion.

And with today's equipment and today's oil patterns, it's extremely important to adjust the surface on your bowling balls more than you maybe think. Okay Dan, so let's go out into the lane, throw another great shot and see the effects of the 360. Let's do it. Wow Dan, we went from a 500, You saw the ball reaction to that. We took it down to a 360 pad.

Big difference in what the ball did at the back end of the lane, right? Correct, yeah. She jumped pretty hard coach. You know, whenever you're in tournament competition, for example, your three daughters bowled as a junior gold and you had to manage with with the surface of different patterns. A lot of cases, they didn't know what the patterns were.

So visually what you saw was where you had to change the pads for the girls. Correct, so based on what the ball speed is and how the ball is reading the lane is gonna tell us what adjustments we need to make, whether it's going from a thousand to say 500 or the other way around, going maybe 500 up to a thousand or even 2000. So management of your surface is very very important. Using your pads in competition, very, very important to what you have to do to get your right ball motion. And, you know what, don't be afraid when you're at home at your home center to play with your surface adjustments on your equipment.

So you're gonna have a little better idea, going into a tournament, already what the ball motion may be with different surfaces on 'em, coach.