TZone as a spare?

[striker12]

I guess in today's game, like you mentioned...you have a lot of high rev, big hook, 2-handed players...and I guess they'd have trouble without a "spare ball". I was talking about (and I guess the pro was as well) your typical, amateur, house player. Your strokers and your tweeners. Sometimes these players use "spare balls" just because they're too lazy to develop the skill to throw their "strike ball" differently to pick up spares.

But I do agree with you and granny that if we're talking crankers or players with big hook/high rev/high oil balls...I guess I could see where a "spare ball" is valuable.

also tweeners use spare balls im a power tweener and cranker my rev rate is 450+ but i can drop it down to 340 but the main thing with people like me who create alot of revs its hard to throw a ball with very little rev like if i throw a ball like i throw my spare ball my rev rate is 340 but i throw it faster so the ball dose not grab the lane much.

[e-tank]

meh i mean its true if you adjust your hand you could pick up corner pins with any ball. Ive done it with my hell raiser revenge many times but a plastic takes lane conditions out of the equation really. Since theyre so cheap, why not get one?

[vdubtx]

Strikes win games, spares win championships.

[Aslan]

Strikes win games, spares win championships.

To me, thats the 2nd biggest difference between pros and amateurs. The 1st biggest difference is the ability to play and adapt to various oil patterns effectively and quickly. But #2 is their ability to pick up spares. Newer, high rev, big hook players only win when they string strikes together. When they can't knock em all own in one throw...suddenly they're looking for a "spare ball". Back in the 50s/60s...pro bowlers bowled more spares than strikes...and were even likely to pick up splits. You don't see that anymore.

[Stormed1]

The reason for a plastic ball is to take the oil pattern out of play when shooting spares. Your coach is right in that you should be able to pick up any sare with your strike ball. But that requires something that most people are not willing to do, which is developing different releases. People now days are more concerned with scores rather than developing skills

[Mike White]

Sounds like your coach is stuck in old school thinking. Back then, with a hooking ball, you could make fairly linear adjustments to pick up any pin, because the oil pattern was fairly flat.

Now the oil pattern tends to be heavy in the middle, and dry outside. The makes the adjustments with a hooking ball very non-linear.

For a right hander, the oil pattern is designed to make mistakes to the right hook more to get back to the pocket, and mistakes left skid more to hold the pocket.
The oil pattern however doesn't know you are trying to pick up a 10 pin, or a 4 pin, so those shots look like mistakes to the oil pattern.

Using a plastic ball, with sufficient speed, and without a large amount of revolutions, the oil pattern has little influence on the path of the ball. That makes adjustments linear again.

Additional benefit to a plastic ball. Anytime I throw a ball that has the potential to fall into the gutter, bad things can happen to that ball (scratches, gouges, etc)
I'd much rather that happen to a cheap $50 ball rather than a $180 ball.

[Aslan]

Well....in all fairness....even though I do think he (coach) is speaking the truth (technically)...once I get more proficient with my reactive/fingertip ball...I probably will use my 14lb urethane for spares. Right now I'm only using it for splits. But if I keep struggling picking up the 10-pin...and I've gotten fully used to the new ball...I'm gonna throw the urethane...rather than punish myself.

For ME...it's not AS MUCH of an issue...because I'm a stroker, low speed, low rev...and I don't have much of a hook even with my standard delivery. So for me...9-10 boards to the left...aim just left of my spot...if I hit it, good release...I can pick up the 10-pin without varying my hand position. But I have a much simpler/classical approach than most modern bowlers.