Expert: - 11/27/2009

Question
I am a 51 year old 182 average bowler and have been bowling for 35 years. Ball speed is 17 mph with a high track and medium rev rate and finger tip grip. Current ball is an 16 lb old El Nino sanded to 400 grit. Lanes are OLD wood that has been recently "screened" and resurfaced. Oil pattern is 42' crowned in the middle and oiled once a day if there is a league. Lanes are stripped once a week by hand. My league is 3 days after the stripping. 60% of the bowers throw straight balls that are urethane or plastic so there is much carry down. I shoot up the boards and am having trouble getting to the pocket shooting from the 5 board while standing on the 10. There is plenty of oil as the reactives come back with very visible oil rings, unlike last season. What ball(s) and drillings  would you recommend to combat this condition? We bowled on dry lanes here for many years so we had balls set up for it. Also the pins are old and on the heavy side.
Thanks, Dave

Answer
Dave,
Getting the ball into a roll seems to be what you need. You said layouts are reflecting the previous dry conditions. Layouts need to change so drill angles are smaller, pins are close to leverage (for more flare), and pin buffers are smaller bringing the cores into play stronger.

Screening, roughs and recoats the lane surface so it's more smooth now, and the heavier oil is apparent. The smoother surface magnifies the effect of the lane oil.

Without knowing what your El Nino looks like (layout), a stronger layout would normally have the center of gravity and mass bias to the right of a right handers thumb. Potentially with a weighthole on the axis (Positive Axis Point or PAP). The pin (or top of the weightblock) would be closer to the PAP than the ball track.

The strong (and sometimes rougher cover) balls available now that I've thrown include : From Storm/Roto: Virtual Gravity, Cell, Mutant Cell, From Brunswick: Siege and Wild Card,  from Columbia: Full Swing  (with Surface), From Ebonite: Evolve (with Surface), From Hammer: Jigsaw and Black Widow Sting. Just off the top of my head, you might take a look at the new Morich Craze, and new Black Widow Nasty too, they look good (but a surface change might be needed on the BW too).

Your speed and layout are probably getting in your way, a new ball drilled for your speed, for the heavy volume and fresh lane surface should do the trick. Thanks for the question. Hope you had a good turkey day. Good luck and good bowling.