2013 Open Championship Oil Patterns

[Greenday]

http://usbcongress.http.internapcdn.net/usbcongress/bowl/tournaments/pdfs/usbcopenchamp/2013/2013TeamConditionGRAPH.pdf

That's the oil pattern for the team tournament.

Doesn't look like an extremely tough pattern to me, but maybe I'm just not so good at reading patterns. It's a little wider than I'm used to so it looks like playing the outside would be more beneficial for hooking the ball.

What say you, bowling experts?

I'm going to do the 1-hour practice before I bowl in the tournament. Should be pretty beneficial.

[billf]

Appears wide at the heads but fairly dry down lane. Personally I think it would be good for multiple angles of play. With a short pattern I prefer to open the lane up.

[Greenday]

41' is short?

[billf]

The forward oil stops at 30'. The rest is just a real light layer from the reverse brush. It would be quick and easy to break that down.

[Greenday]

Well, what I figured is the majority of the oil is in that 30' so that's why I wanted my breakpoint somewhere outside.

[bowl1820]

Well, what I figured is the majority of the oil is in that 30' so that's why I wanted my breakpoint somewhere outside.

Lets see:
total volume is 26.05ml your going to need a aggressive cover.
41' is a medium length (less than 36' is short, 37-42' medium, more than 43' long)
There are 5 loads on the 2 to 2, so You won't have much if any swing area, so it's going to be a tight line.

Using Mo's breakpoint formula
"Read the pattern pdf and find the corner of the highest red bar. Subtract 3 and that's where your breakpoint should be to start."

So You'd might try to start fishing for the breakpoint around the 9 board.

[explorer05]

I found a link to that I find is really cool its an app for iphone, not sure if they have it for Android or not. It's called xbowling tournament and it's free but what it give's you live scores from the people that have already bowled. It reminds of the pattern they used 2 years ago at Reno. It was a tight line. I played 7 to 5 anything past that forget it.

[Greenday]

Bowled the team pattern yesterday. Pretty tough. My team broke the pattern down really well though. My spare shooting was atrocious.

Bowled the singles/doubles pattern today for practice. Not AS tough, but I was tired and struggled to properly hold the ball.

[vdubtx]

Agree that the shots were rather tough. If you were outside of about 9-10 at the break point you were not getting to the pocket. Accuracy and speed were the name of the game.

I was happy that I shot a 603 in Team as it was my first experience at Nationals. Started out rough with a 158, then put things together and finished strong. Doubles and Singles were tougher for me. Could not find a good reaction down lane and struggled with a 538 in doubles and a 574 in Singles. All events of 1715. My spare shooting was an issue as I had to move quite a few boards than I am used to when shooting at right side leaves etc.

[billf]

My spare shooting was an issue as I had to move quite a few boards than I am used to when shooting at right side leaves etc.

Do you use a plastic ball for those? I'm asking because my first thought was, why?

[vdubtx]

Do you use a plastic ball for those? I'm asking because my first thought was, why?

I do use plastic, but for some reason I had to change my angle quite a bit and go much straighter up the lane to get my 3,6,9 or 10's that I left. Not sure what it was but angling across the lane like I typically do did not work for me there.

[billf]

Ok, good to know. I had a tournament about two months ago that the same thing happened to me. I thought I was doing something wrong that weekend with my spare shooting but seeing as you ran into the same thing I'm beginning to wonder.
I also noticed Fagan shooting straighter at spares on some patterns more than others. Makes one wonder.

[Greenday]

Ok, good to know. I had a tournament about two months ago that the same thing happened to me. I thought I was doing something wrong that weekend with my spare shooting but seeing as you ran into the same thing I'm beginning to wonder.
I also noticed Fagan shooting straighter at spares on some patterns more than others. Makes one wonder.

Going through this since I'll be bowling on the pattern tonight, I got to this last post and my coach and I were talking about this. You'd think, throwing a straight ball, it'd be the same at every house yet it isn't. When I'm at my practice alley, I stand on 34, throw over 20 for my ten-pin shots. At league, I stand on 35, throw over 19. You'd think it'd be the opposite because the second house is much more oily, but beats me.

If I recall correctly, when my team had the practice lane for Nationals, I personally felt I was getting a much better reaction when I was throwing straighter down around 7-8 then I was 10 board. More hook, better pin action. Two of the guys agreed with me, but since I was the most inexperienced, my opinion didn't get much weight and the team stuck with the 10 board. They did okay, but I felt we were doing better when we went just a hair outside more. Since I'm bowling by myself on the singles/doubles pattern tonight, I'm going to go with what I wanted to try.

[vdubtx]

Going through this since I'll be bowling on the pattern tonight, I got to this last post and my coach and I were talking about this. You'd think, throwing a straight ball, it'd be the same at every house yet it isn't. When I'm at my practice alley, I stand on 34, throw over 20 for my ten-pin shots. At league, I stand on 35, throw over 19. You'd think it'd be the opposite because the second house is much more oily, but beats me.

If I recall correctly, when my team had the practice lane for Nationals, I personally felt I was getting a much better reaction when I was throwing straighter down around 7-8 then I was 10 board. More hook, better pin action. Two of the guys agreed with me, but since I was the most inexperienced, my opinion didn't get much weight and the team stuck with the 10 board. They did okay, but I felt we were doing better when we went just a hair outside more. Since I'm bowling by myself on the singles/doubles pattern tonight, I'm going to go with what I wanted to try.

How did you do Greenday? What did you think about the differences in the Team and S/D pattern? billf are you going to be bowling Nationals at all?

[UBowling]

We leave for Reno on Thursday and bowl Friday. We have been practicing on this oil pattern for quite a while now. Our scratch leagues put this pattern down for the last couple of months to give everyone decent practice.

Our two teams have a game plan going in of breaking everything down outside to give us some room to play. We will all be throwing it up 5 to break down the out of bounds as much as we can and then move in once we have a good look. Most of us will be using a solid coverstock, something with good surface and putting our breakpoint around 7-9 board probably. My Storm Reign of Power has been great when I practice on the pattern so we will see if that holds up. We have a practice session Friday morning so we will see how it plays out.

[Greenday]

How did you do Greenday? What did you think about the differences in the Team and S/D pattern? billf are you going to be bowling Nationals at all?

Well, the tournament I was in used the Masters' pattern instead. The Masters pattern is definitely tougher than the Open patterns IMO. It's tough to compare the S/D pattern to the Team pattern for me because when I did the team, it was ten people total bowling on the two lanes. When I did the S/D pattern, it was a side-tournament and it was three of us. Naturally, the team pattern broke down faster. I felt like I had just the tiniest bit more wiggle room on the S/D pattern though.


We leave for Reno on Thursday and bowl Friday. We have been practicing on this oil pattern for quite a while now. Our scratch leagues put this pattern down for the last couple of months to give everyone decent practice.

Our two teams have a game plan going in of breaking everything down outside to give us some room to play. We will all be throwing it up 5 to break down the out of bounds as much as we can and then move in once we have a good look. Most of us will be using a solid coverstock, something with good surface and putting our breakpoint around 7-9 board probably. My Storm Reign of Power has been great when I practice on the pattern so we will see if that holds up. We have a practice session Friday morning so we will see how it plays out.

I feel like that might be a little too far, as I'd rather break down the 7-8 boards, this way I could move just a little inside towards the ten. But it depends on your teams' style. I saw a lot of teams having trouble that bowled on the outside getting their balls to come back.