As some of you may know if you read my topic about hurting my wrist I had a tourney and I didn't do to bad under the conditions. First obviously my wrist made it bad. Second my ball was cleaned so it had some more hook I wasn't used to which I couldn't get used to till the tournament because of my wrist. Also the lanes were different then my house lanes, but the lanes actually worked unlike my house lanes, It was clean to. it was actually pretty old but they actually updated the lanes so it didn't look to bad, I also didn't didn't hurt my wrist more so that's good. All in all I only bowled a few pins under my average all three games, which I don't think is bad for a hurt wrist.

Stupid question here, are there different surfaces the wood lanes, some girl was talking about she has never bowled on wood lanes before?

yes wood lanes create more friction with the ball then synthetic

Oo I always had thought there were only wood lanes.

Nope synthetics are the norm now. They look like they could be wood since you still have the boards but they come in huge sections. The oil holds up better on synthetics while it often is absorbed by wood.

So I think this is really great that this fits so well into my topic. I don't want to thread jack but it fits smoothly so here goes: I had an Intramural tourny today too... could have gone better. My scores tanked. My buddy, who has been bowling for something like 7 years, who has an average right now of 206, even had some serious issues. Neither of us had ever faced anything like this. First off, the lanes were in the middle of the ghetto! We drove together and were both driving through the nastiest scummy neighborhood locking the doors and not looking people in the eye lol! but we finally got to the lanes, walked in with our team and found the place to be a total dive! beat to hell wood lanes, the entire place yellow from smoke, old projector scoring systems still half setup with the new high tech junk in place, old chairs and a fairly rank smell. just walking in there gave me the creeps! We both decided, never again will we go there. To bowl or not, the place just made me feel extremely uncomfortable. The worst was the lighting... unbelievably dim! We're talking almost cosmic bowling dim with ceilings that were really low. Scariest place I've ever bowled.

But unfortunately the conditions didn't get better: wood lanes, bowled on already for 3 hours straight, just to take another three hours straight, not oiled since at least the day before, reverse block pattern. Even my weakest ball hooked from a shot at pocket to hitting the back of the 4 pin! My buddy and I managed some spares for a while til the lanes just wouldn't even let us get our spare balls right enough, everyone kicking the old school single row above ground ball return. I don't know how we scored compared to other people, but my teammates aside from my buddy, weren't so hot. The one guy owned three aftermarket, defect bowling balls which were never fit for his hand and he had to horribly squeeze the tiny span and huge holes. The other guy 2 fingered the houseball either left gutter or 7 pin every shot. struck maybe twice though. The other guy borrowed my buddies BW solid and couldn't get his thumb in it but threw its natural hook and literally had the ball at 8 mph. The tournament took the highest 4 scores of each game and added them together.

For the good news: my buddy scored a 150, 201, and 180 something.

The bad news: I had the second highest score each game, my buddy with the highest: 146, 122, 138. Terrible scores for me. not that I'm trying to be cocky or anything, I know I'm still learning, I'm just saying normally I do a bit better.

The rest of the team settled around 100 even. if that.

My buddy hit some strikes by upping the ball speed to around 18 mph and taking all hand out of the ball, shooting straight up 2nd arrow and hoping it turned the corner just slightly to shred the rack. It worked more often than not I'd say.

I was afraid to try for that kind of speed for my lack of accuracy then. I couldn't keep a consistent shot and it changed each time, switching between two completely different degrees of reverse block lanes... ewww.

So I didn't do so hot. So I went bowling for practice later at a better lane. I hit an average of 179 over 7 games, scores in the 170's, 168, an outlier or 158, 213, and 225. Felt much better about myself! I also found that I can get my ball speed up to 18 mph and still be fairly accurate. Once I breached 20 mph though, i lost a lot of accuracy. My highest speed was 21. Though I never play for speed so it doesn't matter. But it would have been nice to know this speed thing earlier for the tourny.

but I digress, no more rant. Sorry if I thread jacked.

And for the record, gosh bowling on the wood lanes really makes me appreciate synthetics! The action of the ball if it found oil then went dry, was still this giant rainbow arc shape... not really a hook at all.

Wish my ghetto bowling ally had synthetics

Yeah. Wood isn't so bad if its kept up with and oiled well. But since you end up dealing with wood's greater friction, the ball eating up oil, and the surface itself sucking up the oil, you end up adjusting much more often and spelunking for oil

That's when you break out the plastic. It can hook, and when I am executing I get it to move on a 39 ft fresh house shot on synthetics. Use it on broken down wood and they really move.

I should buy a plastic ball, considering the lanes aren't kept up, and not to much oil.

Plus a plastic ball for spares extends the life of your reactive ball some.