Coach’s Corner Tip
What are you bowling on?
In the Spring and Summer, many of you are venturing out to houses you may not be familiar with. Sometimes, people are surprised by the center, and have some trouble adjusting to the center. This month, let’s look at different lane surfaces and how they affect your scoring.
If you tuned in to the PBA telecasts of 20 years ago, you saw wood lanes more often than you saw synthetic lanes. Now, you see them only occasionally (in fact, Denver will soon be without any wood centers, at least to my knowledge). However, you will still see wood centers, and you need to know how they play. In short, you will see the ball hook much sooner, harder in the mid-lane, but with less back end reaction. Wood is very, very soft compared to synthetic lanes, and that creates a large “footprint” between the ball and the lane, which translates into high friction in the areas of the lane with less oil. Also, the age of wood lanes usually means that the middle of the lane does not hold oil well. Speed, loft, and making all of your mistakes to the outside of the lane are important on wood. Speed helps to delay the breakpoint on wood, loft helps get the ball past the first six feet, which are generally very worn, and making mistakes into the friction is generally much better than missing to the left. Missing to the left, combined with setting the ball down early on the lane, is generally a recipe for disaster on wood.
So, there’s wood and synthetics, and synthetic lanes are all the same, right? NO. There are variations in the hardness of synthetic lanes, and they do change characteristics with time. A 15-year old synthetic lane is going to react much differently than its new counterpart. The hardest lane surface among the synthetics is
Brunswick Pro-Anvilane. This surface is very hard, which makes the ball glide easily through the front part of the lane. On this surface, it is important to get the ball into a roll right away, so that the ball starts to slow down halfway down the lane and has time to react to the lane surface and lane condition. You generally will
need less speed and more aggressive equipment on this surface. More ball roll is also beneficial when bowling on this surface. If you don’t know what this surface looks like, Brunswick Zone Green Mountain has Pro Anvilane. Now, when synthetics get dry, they hook more than wood, so you have to take into account the lane conditioning procedures. In general, synthetics cause the ball to skid more where there is oil and hook more where there is dry.
The other major flavor of synthetics is AMF HPL 9000. This surface is much softer than Brunswick Pro Anvilane, but much, much harder than any wood surface. It is characterized by the colors of the boards changing every 2-3 boards. This is the surface at most AMF centers, and also at Broomfield Bowl and Centennial Lanes. This surface hooks earlier, so more speed can be used effectively on this surface.
Generally the back end ball reaction is also stronger, which allows you to use a breakpoint on the lane further outside that if you were bowling on the same oil pattern on the Brunswick surface. The ball will generally hook sooner and harder on this surface. Short lane patterns (36’-39’) can be very difficult on this surface, as the change of direction is much more dramatic and harder to control.
By contrast, long (40’ and longer) patterns on Brunswick Pro Anvilane can be very difficult. These patterns on this surface tend to make it hard to get the ball to roll early enough on a consistent basis.
Just remember, a 40’ lane condition will not play the same way on different surfaces. The equipment that works best on each surface is a little different. There are many other important factors that I have not talked about, starting with the topography of the lane surface (for example, it does make a difference if the middle
of the lane lower or higher than the outside of the lane, and whether the lane slopes uphill or downhill). Just like no two lanes in a center play quite the same on a given lane condition, no two lane surfaces will play the same with the same lane condition.