Last night was my first week on Badger. It was my first time bowling in a couple weeks after returning from vacation. I missed the chance to practice on the pattern over the weekend. I was anxious to try the carpal tunnel wrist brace to see if that helped with accuracy and consistency on the PBAX patterns.

The 52-foot oil pattern played pretty much as expected. I was standing 16, pointing the ball over 10.5 board at the arrows and 13 at the downlane markers. Frankly, it did not matter which ball I used. I had about 2 boards hook with each. There was just no traction through the pin deck. A lot of good shots bounced off the pocket leaving weak 7-pins, buckets, or worse.

It took a little getting used to, but I was happy with the wrist support as I could totally relax my grip and wrist and just focus on the direction of my arm swing and hitting my mark. My first two games were in the 180's. I was hitting the pocket consistently, just not carrying. My spare ball skid past a couple easy spares, too. It appeared to be backing up instead of going straight, so I had to adjust all my targets 2 boards tighter. The third game, I was curious and started aiming for the Brooklyn side since the ball was deflecting so much. Hah, it seems that Brooklyns only carry when you are not trying to roll them, and I chalked up a game in the 170's. The fourth game I got serious again. By this point, I was feeling like I could split a board, so I started aiming high pocket, and carried enough strikes for a game in the 210's. I did not have any big scores for the night, finishing in the 750's for 4 games, but was happy to win 3 of 4 points against the other team's anchor bowler.

Btw, I asked the general manager what was up with the lanes on the left side, comparing his and other lefties averages from the past winter league with the current summer league. He said not only are the Badger, Bear, and Wolf new patterns, but the other patterns have been updated to be flatter with less hold in the middle. Next winter league, he expects bowler's averages to drop 10-20 pins.