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Bowling News USA - January 14, 2010 The Schlemer Report (Pepsi - Red, White & Blue)

After months and months of random schedules, taped shows and holiday breaks, the PBA is finally back on a regular schedule.  With the exception of the Chris Paul Charity event which airs Super Bowl Sunday, all of the shows the rest of the season will be live. Oh and before I move on, I have to tell you that this year’s Chris Paul Charity event was sponsored by Storm and Roto Grip and will definitely not disappoint. Storm staffer Norm Duke paired up with Lamar Woodley of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Jason Belmonte with Chris Paul, Pete Weber with Grammy award winner Ludacris and Roto Grip staffer Wes Malott with Hines Ward, also of the Pittsburgh Steelers. All I am going to say is that highlights of that show should make the Sports Center “top 10 plays of the day” and maybe even the week. But I won’t spoil anymore; just be sure to tune in or at least record that telecast. I promise it is well worth the price of admission.

The first telecast of 2010 was last week’s airing of the Pepsi - Red, White and Blue, presented by the USBC. The name “Red, White and Blue” served two purposes. One, it’s the colors of Pepsi, the official soft drink of the PBA. Two it was the USBC’s first attempt in creating a better way of understanding lane conditions. Did it work? The verdict is still out, but the concept is very good and will be used again in the future for sure. The idea was to create a better explanation of the lane condition for those of you watching at home by utilizing color association the same way the sport of golf does. Red tees in golf usually mean shorter play; white means a little tougher and blue is usually one of the toughest. The USBC used this color code the same way. All three patterns were the same length, but each had its own distinct volume and speed in which the machine applied the oil. Red was the lightest of the three and was supposed to be the easiest. White was to be a little tougher and the Blue was to be the toughest of the three. In the end, the White ended up being the easiest of the three and produced the most 300s. And if it gives any indication to the conditions, the record for the most 300s in a PBA event was broken this week. All in all, the concept was well received and the USBC plans to move forward in bringing this pattern concept to bowling centers sometime in the future. The USBC seems to finally understand that there needs to be different levels of difficulty, not just easy or hard. I mean it works in golf, why not in bowling?

As far as how the week unraveled, most players were able to use the same balls or types of balls on two of the three patterns. Depending on how the players threw it, determined which two patterns played similar for them. Some players used the same balls on Red and White and had to change most of their arsenal for the Blue, while other players used the same balls on White and Blue and something completely different on the Red. Every player had their favorite pattern which they struck more on and every player also had a pattern where they didn’t strike as much. Roto Grip staffer Wes Malott for example, just missed making the show because he didn’t strike as much on the Blue pattern each of the two rounds he bowled on it. Wes even used different balls the second time he bowled on the Blue pattern and he still couldn’t increase his strike percentage. And let me tell you if you looked at the overall scores for that event, you know that strike percentage was the key to the week. It took an average of 236.38 to make the top twenty-four and an average of 243.50 for forty-eight games to make the show. Let’s just say that those who made the show didn’t get there by sparing a lot.

Speaking of making the show, the only Storm representative on that telecast was free agent Patrick Allen. “P-A”, as he is referred to on tour, made a big run near the end of match play to get him close to the show. And then to cap it off, he shot 300 during the position round to go from the #5 seed to the #1 seed for the show. He used a combination of a Hy-Road™, T-Road Pearl™ and Second Dimension™ to make the show. Both the Hy-Road and T-Road Pearl were both older balls that PA has had in his bag for awhile. Both balls were pin up with an extra hole on his axis. The Second Dimension he used was drilled that week to compliment those balls and it did not have an extra hole as you can see in the picture.

The reason I chose this particular layout and ball to compliment the Hy-Road and T-Road Pearl was quite simple. I wanted a ball that was clean through the front part of the lane and got into a roll in the mid-lane without losing too much energy. If I would have put an extra hole in this ball, then it would have read the mid-lane early and bogged-down without any energy left when it hit the pocket. I changed the surface by hand ever so slightly on all three balls with a well used 2000-grit Abralon® pad. The reason I use worn Abralon pads sometimes, is so that I don’t cut the surface too deep and create too much traction. Sometimes 2000 Abralon is too much surface and 4000 isn’t enough, so that is when I use worn pads to create the desired surface texture I am looking for.

If you watched the show it was easy to see that PA wasn’t exactly comfortable. In fact, the entire week he battled himself more than the lane conditions. After the first round of match play, PA asked me to watch him and see if there was anything I could see in his game that was disrupting his timing. In about twenty minutes I had his timing and mechanics fixed and he keyed-in on a few things to get thru the rest of the event. Apparently it worked.

By being the #1 seed, PA had not only the usual choice of who starts first, but he also had choice of which pair he wanted to bowl on. Since it was a six-man show and there were two matches going at once, there was an extra pair of lanes in play. So picking the pair of lanes was additional pressure over picking which lane he wanted to finish on. It was easy for both PA and I to see that Scroggins had a really good look on the right pair of lanes in practice and it would take a big game to beat him. So PA decided that the left pair, the pair Scroggins bowled his first match on was the logical option. The left pair had already transitioned and was changing again, which made the odds better for PA who knew he had to play inside. Scroggins is not as comfortable from inside and would have to stay outside and go straighter. Unfortunately the plan only partially worked. Scroggins did struggle with the lane condition from out as we had expected, but PA did not capitalize on this and made two bad shots that gave Scroggins the match.

So there it is - in a nut shell. Be sure to check back next week for the report from the Earl Anthony Memorial Event. Hopefully the Storm Nation can bring home both the men’s and women’s crown from Dublin, California.

 

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January, 2010