Bowling: There's fun to spare as changes boost sport's popularity
Why then, can a 5-year-old stand at the foul line, roll the bowling ball with two hands at a speed slower than a crawl and knock down about as many pins?
"Fast is macho, but it doesn't knock down pins," said Karen Pullman, owner of Karen Pullman's Pro Shop/Bowling Center in Sandy.
"Bowling is a game of angles.
"Most of the time you see recreational players choose a bowling ball that's too light because they want to throw it down the alley at 20 miles per hour."
For the ball to turn the corner, for that little hook into the pocket and into a perfect strike, it needs to decelerate between 3 to 3 1/2 mph, she said. A bowling ball thrown too fast can't decelerate, thereby missing the perfect spot.
While the game of bowling itself hasn't changed much over the past century, how it's played has changed starting with the scoring table.
There are no more pencils and scoring sheets, only buttons and a computer program that can add scores, show standing pins and, with the option on, advise the bowler where best to stand and release to pick up remaining pins.
Computer scoring also makes it impossible to get in those few extra practice rolls before starting the game.
"No, once I turn on the lane, the first roll counts. The game starts from the get-go and ends with the last player rolling the last ball in the 10th frame," she added.
Some of the biggest changes are in the bowling ball itself. Once made of hard rubber, new balls are made of polyester, a harder more aggressive product. This has caused a rash of changes, not only in the delivery, but also in the number of bowling balls high-scoring bowlers may take with them.
"The old bowling balls wouldn't do a whole lot, only what the bowler was able to do. New bowling balls are harder and have all kinds of things added to the surface, like glass bubbles and microchips. It's like added studs to snow tires. Now the bowling balls can do all kinds of different things."
At issue is not so much the bowling balls but lane preparation. The oils put down on the lanes determine how a ball responds. Too much oil will mean the ball slides instead of grips; too little oil means the ball may grip too soon.
"A proprietor can either make you a good bowler or a bad bowler, depending on how much oil is put on the lanes. A proprietor can open a lane up for a righty or lefty or close it. That's why bowling will never be in the Olympics. Proprietors have learned how to manipulate the lanes," she said.
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