Still not really familiar with these forums, so if this isn't the right place for me to ask this question, please let me know.

I'm at school right now, planning on picking up a spare ball when I go home for spring break because 1. I like the place I get my ball drilled and 2. I don't know what the quality of work they do up here is...don't really want to just chance it, even if it is on cheap spare ball.

My question is, when I do go get one and get it drilled, in your opinion is it better to go with a finger tip grip or conventional grip? I know my friend back home had finger tips put in his spare ball but he said since it feels so much like his other bowling balls he wants to try to hook it when shooting at spares and ends up missing a lot. I'm also wondering if going from finger tip grip to conventional and back a few times a game might interfere with concentration. Maybe I'm over thinking. What do you all think?

Your spare balled should be drilled exactly the same as your strike ball as far as span and conventional/fingertip. That said I'm not sure why anyone would drill any ball conventional anymore so I do hope your strike ball is fingertip. Of course your spare ball should be plastic. Your friend has other things to work on other than the way his spare ball is drilled if he's trying to hook his spares too much.

Take it from somebody who's been there. I used a conventional grip for years until this season when I switched to fingertip. During that time, my spare ball was still conventional. Once I got used to fingertip, it felt so awkward shooting my spares with a conventional grip, plus I noticed that my teammates used spare balls with fingertip grip. So I had my Power Groove plugged and drilled fingertip.

If you are going to get a "spare ball", then chances are it will have a hard plastic coverstock and should not react to the lanes unless they are desert dry.

My spare ball used to be my old strike ball, but it's a very tame reactive and it's easy for me to kill the hook by holding my wrist straight. I only use it because I already had it and I can work with it.

Your mileage my vary.

Whether you're spare ball is cheap or not, it should not hook...that's the reason it's called a spare ball. It should have a polyurethane (which can hook a bit on really dry lanes) or plastic coverstock (which will almost never hook unless you are really trying to do so).

My old Storm spare which I'm about to replace with a new Storm Spare is polyurethane, and I'm still about 85% on the 7 pin, only missing when I tug it or overshoot or whatever. If it does move on me, it's barely noticeable (maybe a 1/2 to 1 board even on burned up lanes. And I rarely 'break' my wrist...I just stay behind the ball all the way through the shot as opposed to wrapping around it.

By the way, fingertip for everything you drill...it just makes sense.

Cool.
Thanks a lot for the advise guys.