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As the season winds down I reflect on different aspects of the year. When I think of the Brunswick arsenal and how it was used this year I would have to give the Ball of the year award to the Vapor Zone.

Undoubtedly the ball I have wanted to use because of its versatility has been the Vapor Zone. There was more oil down lane this year. When I tried to use the higher friction cover-stocks they had a short usable life span because of the front to back tapers of the PBA lane conditions. Last year I was able to transition from several of the higher friction covers to either the Activator Plus or Activator cover-stocks and end up with the Classic Zone which is Activator cover with the same core of the Vapor Zone.

The Zone core gives me more reaction options with the same pin position. The higher rev rates of professional bowlers and the transitions they see don't allow us to use pin to axis distances that create wide separation in flare rings. Doing so forces the players to open up their angles, because of the added friction, and when those angles are too open down lane reaction and carry is effected. The lower rev players use opposite strategies because they have the ability to close down their angles with the added friction and they see a very usable arc shape.

I like to use the combination of he Inferno core and the Zone core. The Inferno core tends to be stronger in the mid-lane and smoother off of the break point. When I need a quicker response time I will opt for the Zone core. The Vapor Zone is the same cover-stock as the Absolute Inferno so I spent a lot of time bouncing back and forth between those to balls. 

For most of the year the Absolute looked quite a bit stronger in the middle part of the lane while the Vapor Zone pushed through that spot. At times the Absolute looked like a different cover it was so much stronger in the mid-lane. Because of the mid-lane strength I would be forced to weaken the pin position to the point that I wasn't comfortable with the separation of the flare rings. The PBA tour sees a lot of oil going down lane. When the flare rings get too tight the ball becomes substantially weaker and more sensitive to transitions.

The Zone core allows me to open up the flare separation from weaker pin positions than the Inferno core will. This has a lot to do with the ability to keep the primary pin in a weaker position and adjust the ball reaction shape I wanted by working with the strength of the secondary pin and weight holes. Keep in mind that tour conditions and transitions are different than they are on most league and tournament environments.

I liked to give players secondary pin options in at least three different positions that quite often can make the difference in carry. If you like to use degree measurements to place the secondary pin I liked to use the combination of 20-30 degrees/ 55 degrees and 70-80 degrees. This alone was a great transitional option.

For several years lower pin positions have been a good choice on tour patterns because they read the lane smoother than higher pin options. How low is always relative to the player. I would continue to lower the pin until the desired smoothness was achieved. Then I would adjust the surface to give the desired length. This year was different. Too smooth just did not hit. As the competition got further into the week the back ends got tighter and tighter. Angles and shapes became very important. The lower pin positions I have been able to use for years just did not give me the strength I needed down lane. I had to start looking for other options.

Simply raising the pin higher gave me the more strength but was too sensitive for my liking. Things got worse when we started seeing the early friction combined with the oil down lane. It is very difficult for a player to recognize early friction from the foul line. If I had to say there was one common denominator of PBA lane conditions it is the amount of early friction compared to what most bowlers experience. The balls just want to go left with any physical mistake made in the front part of the lane. It doesn't matter if a bowler has a 180 rpm rev rate or 480 rpm rev rate, you can have flaws in the front part of the lane.

I will note that this seems to be an adjustment characteristic the PBA lane maintenance crew uses. It is my experience that you can do what ever you want to the lane conditions laterally and it doesn't have that much of an effect on professional bowlers but as soon as the front to back tapers are adjusted you see a very large effect. This is especially challenging for those that have never experienced it. As a bowler it is hard to see and feel from the foul line.

Just talking to the bowlers you can tell that certain ball rolls are not effected by this while others have no answer for it. As soon as they try and use a cleaner cover-stock they see the extreme amount of oil down lane. This is when cover-stock options become very important. Finding the right cover-stock  for a given bowler is very important. It is not something that can be fixed with a layout. If a bowler is locked into fewer cover-stock options it becomes necessary to start trying to redesign their ball roll which is not a good idea when you are in competition. Many a bowler is challenged every year to make this decision.

To combat this years challenge I found the Activator Plus cover to be the best overall match up with all the other cover-stock options used to fill gaps from week to week.

As far as layouts were concerned I did not abandon the use of lower pins. Every bowler seems to need that balance of smoothness in their arsenal. I did have to play a lot with holes. You would think that I would want to use bigger holes off the axis to increase flare for the down lane oil but much of the time those bigger holes just read more early friction. I would say I used more small holes than I have in a long time. There were several weeks I wished I had a cover-stock option between the Activator Plus and the Activator Advanced (Smoking Inferno) so I could use some bigger holes.

It has always been my saying that "Good ball reaction never changes...How we accomplish it changes all the time"

I spent more time being confused than I would have liked. There were weeks that nothing I did seemed right and I was very limited on my options this year for inventory reasons.

During the search mode I stumbled on to a couple things that seemed to be usable. Since I wasn't as happy with the lower pins I started going the opposite direction to try and get the look I wanted. I never want to give up smooth it is necessary to maintain smoothness because of transitions. If the patterns or conditions were more defined I would consider otherwise but with today's balls it is very easy to be suckered into stronger being better, maybe in a sprint but not in the long haul.

To accomplish this I tried pins out by the axis, holes on the axis, surface prep, reverse flare and core reshaping. They all served a purpose but nothing stood out as something special. 

One of the things that were done this year were pins positioned relative to the VAL You might want to experiment with this sometime.

If you want to experiment with this you still want to use the pin to PAP distance but try extending the VAL up towards your fingers and see what happens when you use your favorite Pin to Axis distance along with how far it is from this VAL line you extended upward. There seems to be a difference in the motion down lane when you change this. The pin that is closer to your VAL seems to be smoother in reaction (at least on tour it was) as the distance was altered from 0 to 1 to 2 the strength became stronger for most players.

The purpose in trying this was the lower pin placements most bowlers like because of its consistency and smoothness just didn't seem to get to the part of the lane we needed to use this year. The mid-lane was not as usable as we have seen it in the past. There was so much oil down lane that too much arc really struggled in the carry department. Typically speaking higher pins have a quicker response time and when using a break point further down lane that is one of the options we need. Raising the pin to normal distances about the fingers gave us a strong break point but took away the smoothness we need.

What we found was that taking the pin even higher (relative to the VAL) allowed us a different type of smooth motion than the lower pin smoothness we have become comfortable with. If you are wanting to try this you will have to be selective with pin to CG distances. In most cases, it will require pin to CG distances in the 5 inch and better distances. Most pro shops don't even want to stock those distances. Another consideration is the type of core being used for this experiment. Obviously asymmetric cores have a different effect due to the type of asymmetry and strength of asymmetry.

I will have to turn the explanations over to the R&D guys as I have no idea why I was seeing what I was seeing. Now that the season is over I will spend some time trying to understand it a little better.

I don't know if this would benefit a bowler on league conditions or not, you are on your own in that department. I did not have a lot of balls that I could do it with this year but did like what I saw when I did it with the Vapor Zone. I wouldn't call it magic but the motion did seem to allow us to square up to the lane better than the lower pin layouts. The stand up motion of higher pin layouts was not as quick.

I never tried it with pins closer than 4 1/2 inches to the PAP and liked it better with pins in the 5 to 5 1/2 inches. I plan on experimenting with asymmetrical strengths more during the break but my choices during the season were in the 60 to 70 degree range as I was afraid to make them too strong, thinking they would force the bowler to open up his angles.

As you can tell what may seem to be a science really is a trial and error art. I am not in a position to say this does this and that does that because my years of experience has proven to me that this and that are impossible to define. Those that want to make it a science can play their game the way they want I really have learned to appreciate the artistic challenge and value of experience. I hope you enjoy and appreciate your experiments as much as I do.

Don't let this and that stop you from having fun. Experiment in your environment with your game.