Welcome to The Schlemer Report.

[onefrombills]

Chris Schlemer besides just being a great guy is also the Storm Rep on Tour .

Last week we found ourselves in Omaha, NE at Thunder Alley. Team Storm had a solid week but nothing to write home about. Norm Duke led the Storm Nation again with a 14th place finish while fellow staffers Ryan Shafer and Jeff Carter finished 15th and 26th respectively. All I can say is that it was a roller coaster of ball selections all week. We bowled on the Viper pattern which is now 38’ in length. Not to mention the adjustments to volumes and offsets within the pattern. If you go to RotoGrip.com and check out the Roto Report you will get a better understanding of what I am talking about from day 1 to the show. Anyway, in referring to the pattern adjustments from last season to this past week, only one lefty made the top 32…nothing more to explain.

Team Storm used a variety of balls last week. Duke used a combo of a Passion, Fired Up, Dimension, Hy-Road and Spit Fire. Shafer used a few different Hy-Roads, Rapid Fires, Rapid Fire Pearl’s and a Virtual Gravity. Jeff Carter on the other hand, used a couple different Virtual Gravity’s, Rapid Fire solids, Rapid Pearl and Hy-Road in his grouping. The best option? Anything was possible depending who you were following. Pair to pair was an adventure to say the least. Some people playing straight with surface, some curving it with surface, some in between with shine, it was by far tougher mentally than physically last week for sure.

To make it to match play, Norm Duke was inside wheeling 25 to 10. Then, when match play started, he moved back right and played straighter. Depending on the pair and who he was bowling in round robin, he played up 8, up 5, up 11 or bellied it slightly 12 to 5. Norm sees the lane differently than most and relies more on the lane to tell him where to play.

Ryan Shafer is more apt to play a certain zone and make ball changes in order to play where he is comfortable. For example, he used a Hy-Road with pin down and an extra hole on the left lane and used a Hy-Road, with the pin in middle finger and no extra hole on the right lane. This is a common trick for Ryan on certain pairs of a center throughout the week, but very rarely does he have to do this on virtually every pair, every game.

Jeff Carter had even more variety with his selections. He usually started deeper inside with a Rapid Fire or Virtual Gravity in order to blend out the friction to start. Then, as the lane would transition, he would make angle adjustments lane to lane. For more insight into his week log onto jeffcarterbowling.com. Jeff logs everything from balls used, targets used, to spares and splits.

Next week is a new week and anything can happen. Who knows… maybe we will finally have an all Storm and Roto Grip TV show. Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about! I mean anything is possible right? Look at our presidential election. Anything is possible.

Alright friends… hopefully next week I will have more information to share from behind the scenes of another victory. If not, well…l I will still have some kind of information to share with all of you out there in internet land. I would like to close by thanking Al Gore for creating the internet and making all of this possible. I am Chris Schlemer and I endorse this message.

[kev3inp]

Here I thought it might have been a holiday guide from Hammacher-Schlemer. Glad it's about bowling instead. And the guy is almost as funny as I am. I'm looking forward to more of these.