For a house shot, I can see having 4 balls, but no need to carry them all into the building with you. You build an arsenal starting with ones bowling style. that has to be the first ingredient. There is no one size fits all when it comes to arsenals. My arsenal is very different from Erins ( not picking on you Erin ), because of our different bowling styles. A majority of my bowling balls are drilled for length. The balls that hook the most, don't get used a lot. Even on PBA shots, the big hooking balls don't get used much. Yes I can get just as much hook, if not more hook on PBA shots. The big problem is you don't have the mistake room on the PBA shots that you do on house shots. So the same balls that work wonders on house shots, may not work wonders on PBA shots.

It may have been the house I was bowling at, but I found that most if not all of the patterns played better from the outside. I thought that the carry was better and it seemed like I had an easier time getting to the pocket. Carry was a much bigger issue for me than reaching the pocket. Matching up ball with bowler is so big on the PBA shots. One thing I saw was that you have to be in the pocket. You can't risk losing the pocket for more backend. So, you want balls that don't jump off of the breakpoint. You want an evenish rolling ball. Strong arc with a continuos backend would work well. Still, even with that, I bowled better with balls that got length. The reason is because of my rev rate and ball speed. I'm not Robert Smith, but my rev rate has always been higher than my ball speed. I have just this year increased my ball speed. If I get to bowl in another PBA pattern league, I will see how that changes things.

For a house shot that you normally play on, I can't see carrying more than 3 balls into the building. a medium/heavy oil ball and a light/medium ball will cover everything they can throw at you. That means different things to different people. For me its a particle pearl and a pearl ball. No matter what they do to the lane machine, I can bowl on it with my particle pearl. I keep an extra ball in my car for drier conditions.