Expert: - 9/2/2008

Question
Hi!  My fiance and I have just joined a league with some friends and we are interested in getting our own gear. We have both bowled very little in the past, just as a spur of the moment recreational thing. you know.
  I was hoping that you could tell me the best kind of balls for us to start with. Should we get one that hooks?, what weight?, how should it be drilled? etc...   I am getting alot of opinions from people who may or may not know what they're talking about.  Any help you could give me would be greatly appreciated.  I'd hate to get discouraged right off the bat, because I'm using the wrong ball.  Which I assume is the reason that a "house" ball doesn't feel right.   Thank you!

Answer
Robert,
I'm a fan of starting with more basic (plastic) bowling balls. When starting with a performance oriented ball, you don't so much learn to bowl as learn to control your ball. The environment of our sport changes constantly, so control of a performance ball needs to change constantly.

One reason people feel so lost when they get their first (performance) ball, the ball, the lane conditions, ball speed, all influences where the ball goes. Kind of like throwing a Frisbee or boom-a-rang on a windy day (no idea how the environment will effect where it is going to go, what it will do.

Use 10 percent of your body weight as a starting point, but any experience with house balls, and more generic fits, will influence your choice.

If the 13lber at the center fits your hand (holes big enough) but you roll it 100mph, the weight is to light. If a heavier ball seems OK but you have to grip like crazy, the weight is probably good, but the fit needs to be better.

A properly fit ball just hangs in your hand, and let's go of you! The proper fit is hard to describe, but once you have a ball that takes NO effort to "hold on to" the sport becomes much easier.

Plastic balls demand more of you when it comes to learning to hook the ball, but when you can hook plastic you can hook anything.

Bowlers do a lot of things differently, and what works OK for one may not work so well for someone else. Faster, slower, bigger, smaller,  a custom fit ball allows for many things (footwork, swing, delivery) to happen more naturally for each of us.

Thanks for the question. Good luck and good bowling.