Ball Review
NO HOLES BARRED
BY VERNON PETERSON. {
Vernon.Peterson@
kegel.net }
No Shower of New Releases
THIS IS MY SECOND April as Bowlers Journal’s ball reviewer, and it’s now obvious that April does not bring a shower of new releases. As you’ll see on the pages that follow, we had only two balls to review. That said, they’re both special and do what they’re intended to do. And I’m expecting that May will bring a garden of new releases heading into Bowl Expo in June.
The tournament season has arrived for most of us — local, state and national — and I hope yours is off to a great start. I also hope our reviews will help you prepare for the various patterns you’ll be facing, some of which won’t be anything like the typical house shots we bowl on during league play.
THE TESTING:We once again tapped the talents of Terrance Reeves (a.k.a. “T”), a PBA Tour exempt player during the 2008-09 season. “T” has a rev rate around 400-rpm, and throws the ball around 18.5-mph. His axis is 4 1/2 over and zero up, and we used a 50/5/35 layout (5x4x3 in the VLS system). This is a pin-up layout for him, to see what kind of ball reaction he would get for our reviews. I used the same layout I have used for all reviewed balls thus far: 60/4.5/40 (VLS: 4.5x3.5x3). We threw each ball more than 30 times on three patterns: 2014 USBC Open Doubles/Singles, Kegel Stone Street (a heavier volume recreational pattern), and a 39-ft. lighter volume house pattern. We use CATS on each shot to track and keep records of our ball paths. We do all of our testing at the Kegel Training Center in Lake Wales, Fla., home of the flattest lanes on Earth. This month, the lanes were conditioned with Defense-S, using the Kegel Lane Walker. Defense-S is close to Kegel’s Ice conditioner, but breaks down, so we can see a little more transition when testing on it. We also use the Jayhawk ball scanner, which provides the surface roughness (RA) of a ball and the surface’s average true original finish out of the box after the factory process.
THE SKINNY ON THE LATEST AND GREATEST
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