Sadly its a thing of the past. I believe they only held it twice. As I recall, a lot of players boycotted the event. `I really enjoy watching them though.
It really adds fuel to the fire when debating if the balls or the lanes are the reason scores are so high.
Hey Champ!...how goes it?
a lot of things go into the making of high scores, but if the choices are the balls or the lane conditions, the lane conditions win by a huge, huge margin.
just one example...
i bowled in a notorious league in Detroit called the Playdium. it was there under the guise of people wanting to bowl on tough conditions, but was really so guys could book low averages without having to intentionally miss pins.
the conditions were crazy hard, and most of the league was guys that averaged between 210 and 235 on 'normal' conditions. no one could average 200, and we were allowed to use any bowling ball we wanted. most guys were in the 170s.
if you took the same bowlers, and put us on an easy house shot, most of us could average over 200 without reactive balls.
another example is the senior scratch tournaments in which i bowl.
one group always bowls on tough shots, the other is always on whatever house shot the houses put out there.
to make the cut to match-play on the tough shots usually takes an average of 195-205, on the easy shots its 230-240. same bowlers, same bowling balls, different conditions.
take away reactive balls and all the scores would drop, but the discrepancies would be about the same.
balls help, but scores are determined by lane conditions.