Why wont they change it?
As someone who has been putting oil on lanes since the 1960s I can see the fors and against of increased oil patterns.
First I will give you a little history of oiling techniques used in Sydney AMF centres and some private centres:
Up untill 1971-1972 all centres would spray oil on by hand than buff with a floor buffer,(no lane the same no matter how good you were).Than we were instructed to use a pad method i.e;oil soaked towel dragged up lane one side back the other side,this sometimes created a difference at each end of the house because pads were stacked on top of each other.From 1978 onwards centres began to recieve automatic lane oiling machines,great, now we could put down a very consistant pattern,(if you knew how to use the machine,most did not).From 1978 till 1989 lane cleaning was haphazad or near non existant in many centres,we used keys as they were called some were properly built some were poor copies that did not work well and the cleaning programs were from every day in some centres to once a week in others.About this time companys like Century were discovering that to get high scores the backend of the lane has to be squeeky clean,not always possible with the equipment we were using.Along comes the first of the spray and vacuum lane strippers from 1990 on,gee this does a good job but alas they were terrible for creating a reverse block by the variation of their spray patterns.Than as far as AMF were concerned in 1991 out comes the Century Gemini a machine that washes the lane and oils at the same time this machine was great in that it evenly washed the lane,now we started to see some scores,in my case only the second 300 game in any centre I worked in,eventually we had 11 - 300 games in the next 7 years.
Now this was all done without a WALL, it was illegel to put a wall on a lane in Australia, as the than ATBC brought out rules that limited the amount of units of oil you could increase across the lane.This rule has been lost in time but at no time have I seen it abolished only the people who implemented it have all but vanished. At no time has any centre I worked in had a wall untill we got the new HVO SUMMIT oiling machines which were built to creat a wall.
A wall is not needed to create high scores,in fact the first and second 900 series bowled were on LEGENDS lane oil and if they followed Legends oil pattern techniques there would have been no wall,Legends says you dont need them,you adjust the break point by the length and taper of the pattern.
So what does all this mean:
1.Up untill 1991 the lanes were not conducive to high scores,but at times it did happen.
2.Higher scores were realy starting to happen from 1991
3.The urethane and reactive urethane bowling balls started to increase the scoring by increasing entry angles into the pins(this also started a decline in scoring for a couple of years untill oil companys were able to produce oils to stand up to sponges rolling over the lanes)
4.With the synthetic lane surfaces now becoming more prevalent and lane oil able to last longer,the scores can only get higher.
Now is Belmo shooting 248 avg.not real.This has been a slow process to get to this point in time,I can asure you he would not have bowled that average 20 years ago even if he went back in a time machine and took his reactive balls with him,why because the lanes were not conducive to high scoring.
So Warrawong lanes are too easy,I can tell the Head mechanic Karl has been there for over 20 years and he knows his stuff about lanes,you do not get these scores through accident,this is all the past coming together.
Now to the matter at hand WHY DONT THEY CHANGE THEM how much oil can a centre put on a lane before the regular customer with his polyester ball (about 90% of all league bowlers)finds he can't hook it,no angle of entry no scores no improvement,he gives up bowling. he may as well if some people have thier way.Think back to when you all started bowling,were you able to hook the ball,no,you had to learn,now what if you had to learn to crank before you could hook it, think about it most bowlers still can't now.
Another thing to remember a lot of centres start having a lot of trouble if too much oil is put on the lanes,many are on the limit now,machine stoppages and increased ball damage will result.
If you get through all this thanks for reading its been a long journey with no instruction manual only 20-20 hindsight.
willey.