Welcome to 2010 and most of you are about half way through your league season. Some of you might be bowling well this season, and some may not be. Most of you might be getting ready to start your Local City or State tournaments. So are you prepared for the tournament season? Do you think you have the right bowling balls to compete at the higher level for the tournaments? This week I would like to talk about some drilling layouts and bowling ball surfaces that you may want to have in your bag this tournament season. I will explain the different drilling techniques and surface preparations so you can better understand your equipment and have the right tools to excel on the conditions you might face.

Bowling tournaments can be a very fun time. It could also be a time where you struggle to bowl well. Having the right drilling layouts and ball surfaces will help you achieve greater success on the lanes. I am not saying that you will bowl better with the advice I give you here, remember equipment is a big factor to scoring, but it ultimately comes down to the bowler themselves. I can give you the advice, but you, the bowler, have to be able to execute your shot.

The first step I want to talk about is your bowling ball surface. You can not go into any tournament setting and have the same surfaces on every bowling ball you own and expect to have the right tools. It’s kind of like going to the golf course with a bag full of 9 irons. It’s much more difficult to make par 5’s with just 9 irons. So the first thing you should do is actually look at your equipment and have at least one bowling ball sanded to 500 grit or 1000 grit finish. These are for when you encounter a heavier oil condition. The duller the surface, the more friction you will have on those heavier oil patterns. Then next bowling ball should have anywhere from a 2000 to 4000 grit finish. These will be a little less aggressive then your lower grits, helping your bowling ball travel further on the lane surface before it begins to hook. These surfaces will be most effective on the medium oil conditions. Last, you should have at least one polished bowling ball in your bag. Having a bowling ball that is polished will have even less friction in the oil and front part of the lane surface.

Now how do you know which one of these to use? I will give you a very simple tip. Watch what your ball is doing. If your bowling ball is traveling to far down the lane then guess what, the bowling ball is telling you that for this pattern you don’t have the right ball . Go to my brother the duller surface ball. Sometimes I hear voices in my head haha. So if your bowling ball tells you to use another then now at least having these couple tips about surface will help you make the better decision.

Now on to the next part, about drilling layouts, you will need to have a couple different layouts in your bowling bag as well. The first one I would like to talk about is a drilling that will help you when you encounter heavier patterns. You should have a bowling ball in you bag that has a drilling layout where your locator pin (that’s the colored dot on the bowling ball) is placed even with or below your finger gripping holes. Having locator pins lower will help the bowling ball start to rev up faster on the lane thereby creating less length and a smoother back end reaction. If you have trouble understanding that part, let’s think of the lane conditions. If you have a heavier or longer oil pattern, the lane oil will make the bowling ball travel further down the lane. So just keeping it simple, if you use a bowling ball that is drilled to go long and you are bowling on heavier oil, which will make the ball go longer, what are your chances of having that bowling ball hit the pocket on a consistent basis? Not a good chance. You may be able to hit it a couple times, but if you miss a little bit from your target then you will not be happy. So my suggestion is to use pin down bowling ball when encountering heavier patterns.

When you encounter less oil then you would want to use drilling layouts that have the pins higher above your finger gripping holes. Having locator pins higher will create longer bowling ball motion down the lane. These will work best when you start to see your bowling ball hook to soon. Now I could get into a deeper conversation about Mass Bias or PSA placements, along with locator pin distances from you positive axis point, but that will be a very lengthy article. I will save that for another time.

So let’s recap this weeks article, You need bowling balls in your bag with different sanded or polished surfaces, and locator pins below or above your finger gripping holes to be able to attack different lane patterns. Having these tools in your bag and properly drilled will help you achieve greater success on the lane conditions of today’s sport. Remember, you have to observe and define what your bowling ball is doing on the lanes and be able to take that knowledge and turn it into something great. Until next week, have fun, bowl well, execute shots and let’s say it again: Have fun.

T.J. Yeip is the Manager of GLC Bowling and the Lead Technical Advisor. He is an IBPSIA Advanced Certified Member and former PBA member. You can email your questions to him personally at thomas.yeip@glcbowling.com