So far, I feel the USBC is just teasing bowlers. PBAX Pattern leagues are relegated to Summer activity and a few Fall leagues. And, there are many, many bowlers who just don't bowl in the Summer to take advantage of this.

So, when is the USBC going to mandate that these patterns be used in regular league play?

There are just too many bowlers who go for the high average House shot, and don't accept the challenge. So, lets start a movement to have PBA patterns mandatory for league play.

Maybe not in social leagues, but in competitive leagues anyway.

I feel the concept is dying in my area. We are down to 3 houses of 13 with a PBAX league this Summer.

Its not going to happen. So just put it from your mind. USBC jumped in bed with BPAA and with that, you can be assured that no further lane certification or restrictions will be implemented.
Once USBC handed over their integrity to BPAA, it was a done deal. And they are moving across the country to get into that bed. I didn't even see an engagement ring.

We have 12 houses (one is a college center) and of those only one puts out a PBA league and last season it had 18 people in it. You have to accept that as it is, the PBA Experience program is not flying all that well. Nearly 10,000 bowlers and all we can muster is 18 for a PBA league. Part of that is the lay out and the fact that the coordinator wants Jr bowlers to be envolved. Therefore no prize fund. And you know that pretty much eliminates nearly 100% of the high level bowlers.

Erin

They shouldn't use them for regular league, but i say they should run PBAX leagues all year around instead of just the summer. Get more centers to do this and I think it would be great especially for regular tournament bowlers.

I'd be happy if the actual patterns played ANYTHING like they are supposed to be laid out. I don't know what the story is with the house I bowl at but the patterns don't seem to jive at all with what the USBC says they are supposed to be. I don't know if they even send tapes in or what.

DD I thought the same about my house, but Brad Angelo came to our centers 'bowl with the pro' and we asked him what he thought about how our lanes played compared to the tour. His reply was that the patterns play different in each house. He went on to say that in each house there were always variations because of lane surface wear and oil volume; and that the way they are broken down in the course of practice had a lot to do with how the pattern will play.

Dennis,I guess i'm kind of lucky here in so. california. My league is not usbc certified but they put out the pba patterns all year long and I know of 1 other alley that does the same. That alley also lays it out on sundays in the whole house for practice.

I also heard that about 4 more houses are going to start doing the pbax leagues.

rizon, last year we had 11 of the 13 houses in our association lay down a sanctioned PBAX Summer league. This year, there are only 3. But, they seem more filled. The really successful ones are run by Pros who help during the league play. And, they give open instruction right afterwards too.

We have NO PBAX leagues during the regular Fall Season.

I subbed in one a little farther away, but it was not sanctioned. The House did have 6 lanes set aside with a different pattern for practice. The lanes had to be reserved, and they didn't let the open public bowl on them.

The biggest problem I have seen with getting these patterns into general use is that people do not change their game when the pattern changes. The league I am in, there are probably 4 of us that are not treating like a tight house shot. When you get people that start out bowling 4th arrow no matter what pattern they're on, they're going to a) say that pattern isn't right, because "I got it to where they said the breakpoint was but it didn't come back" and b) F the pattern up for anyone else. When you watch the pros on Sunday playing the lanes the way they're "supposed to be played" on TV, it's because they spent an hour or more practicing on those lanes the right way, setting them up.

Consider this when reading the "lane play guides" from the pros for the PBAX leagues. They bowl 7 game blocks on the pattern. The average rev rate on tour is in the mid 400s. In my league of 16 guys, we have 2 that are mid 400s. The lanes at the end of one of our 4 game blocks probably look like the pros lanes after 2.

What am I saying? I don't know, honestly. I guess I'm saying that it seems like a lot of people that get into these kinds of leagues are doing it with the idea that they will get to play the Cheetah the same way they see TJ do it in a final match, or be lofting the gutter caps on the Shark. I don't know if that is the case in other centers, but that will never happen in mine. And it's not because of the way the center lays down the patterns, and it's not even because of the bowlers - we do have people there that could play the same line PDW does on the Shark. What we don't have is an entire house filled with tour caliber players breaking down the lanes uniformly.

They won't. What they will do is take away all the awards for house shots and make it so the more competitive bowlers want to bowl PBAX leagues.



That's what they're trying to push, but how in the world would the USBC quantify what is an is not a "competitive" league? That's a slippery slope and not one that I think the USBC should try and traverse.



It will start off small and then eventually grow. What you can't do is legislate these types of things and force them down someone's throat. What are you, a Democrat?

Well, there are Sport Leagues here. But, the only rule they follow is the ratio of center oil to outside. The quantity of oil differs by House.

What is the problem of structuring a level system for leagues? A = Social, B = Sport, C = PBA. People can then progress at their own pace, and step up when they feel capable.

You dictate the level of difficulty and the level of competition by each lane surface, A, B, or C.

This is not like an entitlement. Democrat or Republican, I just want some challenge other than a House shot.

Bowlers today, are separating between the high score lanes and the challenging ones. And, it is probably 90-10. This needs better structure. Or the 10 will become 0.

That's the only rule for a sport league, and PBAX leagues are sport leagues. There's no guarantee that you're bowling on a PBA pattern. There's no check for that.



You can't force it on people though. If you do, a huge number will quit. If you "incent" them and they make the decision to bowl, they'll be more likely to stick around.

I was the only right hander on my set and it didn't matter if I stood 30, 20, 10 or 5 if the ball got outside of the 5 board it was in the ditch. THAT is no Cheetah, no matter how you wanna spin it.

I have found in my area that there are no Sport/PBA leagues during the fall/winter and only 1 during the summer. My summer league was 6 teams of 3 last season. This season we have 10 teams. Around me, there isn't much of a push for it though. Most bowlers would rather have bloated averages and honor scores than actually learn how to bowl properly.

The debate about mandating harder shots for all leagues has been going on for years, and it will never happen. Those who don't want the challenge will quickly quit, and I'm referring to the high average house bowler that tries to play the same line no matter what. You would also have more and more houses not certify because they don't want to have to put out the conditions that will make them lose bowlers, and eventually less and less bowling centers. In general forcing this on people will kill this sport.

There has also been suggestions of a tiered system for a few years, Kegel has even came up with a plan for it, including several different patterns in each tier. You can't go Social, Sport then PBA, because as Lefty said PBA patterns are Sport compliant patterns. Also there are many Sport patterns that are harder than the 5 PBA patterns, as well was many that are easier. The whole idea of the PBAX leagues was to help Sport bowling by introducing this gimmick of bowling on the same exact patterns as the Pros. It initially worked in some areas, but now many want nothing to do with it since they can't just throw the ball the same way they always did on house shots and put up good scores, deflated their egos some. In the centers that have tried PBA league, those that choose not to do it again because of the lack of interest.

Another issue with the tiered system, would be that some bowlers that could and should step up would remain down at the easy level and take advantage of the less skilled, yet if forced to move on might decide to quit. I do think in a tiered system scratch leagues might be able to make a comeback as many of the bowlers that would move up probably don't like having to compete in all handicap leagues.

I understand your frustration about wanting tougher conditions Dennis. I hear people complain way too much when the lanes aren't to their liking, or are slightly different than every other week of bowling. I like tougher lane conditions myself. I know of at least 20 people from one league that are not returning to the center I bowled my Tuesday mens league in, this includes my whole team. Most of them are because they don't like the lane conditions which were hard. Yes there was a huge drop in league average from last season. I dropped 15+ pins, but I take full responsibility for it, I wasn't consistent with anything through a whole night much less the season. If other things at this center such as customer service and a few others were better I would have no problem bowling their next season, but since it won't change I won't return to that center even for open play.

Last night was my first night in the Fort Walton Beach PBAX league, and the Cheetah was pretty much as advertised. The lanes are all wood, so the back ends were absolutely screaming. The major weaknes in my game is having to play a break-point outside the 5 board, and so I got absolutely run over as one might imagine . 5 splits in a row at one point, before I finally resigned myself to throwing the White Dot the rest of the night just to avoid the train wrecks. Here's the kicker, though; I've never had so much fun throwing a 480 in my whole life, because the few times that I did cowboy up and get the ball out to the 3 board I was rewarded with 10 straight back. I now know without doubt that I need to log some serious hours playing the twig. I've rarely been more pumped to get out for practice because getting my butt kicked has always been the best motivator. On the other hand there were a couple crankers on my pair that kept talking about how they were ready to give up bowling just because they couldn't (more like wouldn't) adapt to what the lane was giving them. I've never been able to understand that way of thinking, but I agree that is a major reason why the PBAX program is floundering.

Chubbs, it is the crankers, no thumbers, high rev guys who are failing and disgruntled on these patterns. When they have to play an outside shot, or come straight up they flat out stop. It is not their game. Banking off a dry house shot is where their level of comfort lies.

I would like to see a league where the USBC National shot was used exclusively, I would like to see what I could average on that for a whole season. It rewards good shots and penalizes bad shots, there are no advantages for crankers or strokers it is just about as fair of a shot as you could have.

The biggest reason the PBAX and sport patterns are failing is the inconsistency of the shot from week to week either because of the incompetence of the person putting the shot down or because of faulty equipment. I really don't want to bowl on someone's twist on the Cheetah I want to bowl on the actual cheetah pattern, so if you don't have the actual program in a machine that is capable of putting the shot down, then don't bother because these are the things that are scaring people away from competitive bowling. My house can't even put down an easy house pattern, much less a sport pattern.

At the center I bowl at, the machine has the shot programmed in and it's still not the same week to week.

I think that would be a great idea, and I think a lot of people would be interested in it. It would make a lot of people much better bowlers because they would have to consistantly throw good shots to succeed. Howvere, people can get annoyed very quickly, and a much lower average then they are used to might discourage them and keep them out of the league.

My house is the same way with its pattterns. It was unbelieveable. Not onlyare the patterns sometimes off so is the volume of oil on the lane.

We have a Kegel machine at our house, and the patterns are close each week. Some times it's earlier, or later, or sharper on the backends, but that's how bowling is. There are so many variables. The Cheetah does not play the same for the pros every week either - it is learning to adjust and find a playable area.

DD, if you were standing on 5 and throwing over 5 you would have been pointing to the pocket. Did you try throwing straight up the boards, keeping it outside 5 the whole time? Laydown on 4, going up 4?

PBAX is big in Tucson. We have four adult leagues and two junior leagues this year, and the league at my house has about 30 bowlers.

I got into a scratch league instead, and that league went from 12 teams last summer to 7 this summer. The traveling league was there last night, and they seem to be suffering, too.

The answer is simple, really.

40 feet of flat oil and God help us all!

Yeah, went straight up 3 and hit the 6 pin. It was great.

Over here we have 3 PBAX Leagues. 2 on Monday one morning and one evening. However, those two leagues haveabout 8-10 teams of 3 person teams. One Friday Night which is Scratch Junior/Adult league that probally the biggest PBAX League we have about 12 teams or so of 4 person teams.

In the Fall/Winter they cut the PBA Legues just to Mondays and elminate the friday night league.

I seen people come and go with those leagues. I still dont see the higher caliber player joining who is average 220+. It usually the bowler who are in 170-200 range who are joining.

Here in SoCal we have at least 5 or 6 PBAX leagues around here within a 20 mile radius, that run year round, I bowl in 2 of the 5, our trio league has 14 teams (18 for the fall). Also a singles league with 24 teams/bowlers on tuesday nights. Actually there has been a suprisingly number of 220+ THS bowlers that have swallowed their pride and have remained in our leagues without quitting yet.
So just maybe it's a good sign around here anyway.