Hey Jim, All the pin manufacturers like to crow about how their brand flies better. It's not just cheater balls and cheater lanes.
Changing pin brands at Tuggeranong and making the edge of the pattern absolutely dry gave them 13+ 300's this year. Increased friction = lower deflection, but the new pins certainly upped the carry rate. I suspect that the old ones were just worn out in terms of resilience (or coefficient of restitution if we want to get physical). Pins also use voids to control weight and if you put those voids lower, then you can tweak the topple angle to the minimum (6° or 9°, I can't remember). You can probably make the locking ring on the base out of something super bouncy and get them to move faster off the spot as well.
But in my experience, nothing beats just putting them on spot correctly and having the gutter depth set right. (Not necessarily minimum from what some proprietors have kindly shared with me over the years.)
Simply get an old urethane ball out and listen to the difference in sound when it hits the pocket compared to a Critical Theory or Raptor and you know the pins aren't the problem. Sadly, pins aren't the seemingly elegant solution they could be either. USBC experimented with heavier pins some years ago. It just made things hopeless for people using lighter balls and made no difference to the physical marvels that are modern bowling balls at full weight.
Reining the house shots in, ever so slowly to a score-able level while respecting the skills of accuracy, repetition and strong ball roll is the best answer IMO. It took us years to get into this mess. It makes sense that it will take years to get out of it. I know of one proprietor who made their house shot a smidge tougher. House bowlers struggled in week 1, got a feel for it in weeks 2-4 and were knocking it dead 3 months later. Now this person is considering making it incrementally tougher again.
Bathurst has a pretty good house shot. It's dead easy, but it's got some volume and all styles of player have a look on it if the player can move their feet and target. I can play it straighter or hook it quite a bit and still have a decent look. It just depends on the day and what's working. (Especially concerning the nut behind the wheel!) Their tournament shot is based on the same principle. It's tougher than the house shot on paper, yet pulls very high scores because it opens up good angles to the pocket from both sides of the lane. I think with a slight volume reduction, it'd make a great house shot, but the locals probably aren't ready for that yet.
Softly, softly is the key. Don't just take the exit from Easy Street to Highway to Hell or everyone's going to get off the bus. There's a few more interesting avenues in the Kegel pattern book that will allow us to bring everyone along on the journey back to greatness. In actuality, I suspect that scores will initially go up if we take this path, as players will get better angles to play. (Providing that the panels aren't glazed outside 10 board in too many houses.) Think of it as a scenic route.
Contrary to popular belief, I'm happy for lanes to be easy. Just not cheating. At least require a player to throw the ball well enough to knock the corners out from their own efforts, rather than building extreme friction into the playing surface. That way we can return some component of athleticism into throwing a bowling ball well enough to string a few strikes together.
Cheers,
Jason
