Looked it up because I was sure I heard this before. Brunswick house balls are indeed listed as being urethane [1]. I can say from experience that my polyester ball is both less durable than a house ball and curves less than a house ball when thrown two handed.
There are plenty of professionals that bowl two handed like that, including the most successful bowler of the past decade. It is a completely valid and accurate method to hook the ball a lot.
Not true, if you get enough revs on the ball a urethane coverstock will curve no problem (IIRC most alley balls are urethane due to higher durability than polyester). Throw two handed with no thumb with your palm under the ball and axis rotation (i.e. the axis of rotation is at an angle to the direction the ball travels) and you will get significant curve.
It's not remotely close to impossible to hook a polyester house ball. You have to go out of your way to do it, but it's not even particularly difficult to get some movement.
There have been rule changes to equipment at different levels to help counteract some of the issues with two handed bowlers, and modern bowling balls.
(Note: I bowl in leagues in the UK, so definitely not at a competitive level).
Back in August 2020 balance holes were banned by the USBC (and therefore applied internationally), which would have a greater impact on two handed bowlers - as they don't insert a thumb in the ball, it gave them the potential for two balance holes instead of one. Currently every hole drilled into the ball must be used during the release of the ball.
More recently certain competitions (PBA mostly) are restricting the use of urethane balls to ban any balls which don't meet a minimum level of hardness. This hasn't been applied at a wider level yet, although it may have an impact over time.
> the only relevant factors should be its weight, its center of mass, and its moments of inertia around a few axes.
I believe the single biggest factor is which material the outer cover is made from. House balls don’t hook much because they usually just use a plastic cover which doesn’t grip very well.
If you are bowling with a house bowling ball, and not hooking it extensively you would have done just as well on any lane. The lane did not do it for you. The balls used by league bowlers are highly reactive and they generate spin in the oil. Once they hit that dry part on the outside they fly into the pocket for strikes.
If you came off the street, picked up a ball of the rack, and bowled a great game it was all you.
The article and comments together are great, because all at once I have a newfound respect for the complexity of bowling (from the cores to the oil patterns) and yet am bolstered in the feeling that there is something inherently casual about it, mostly because - and I cannot get over this - I had never even considered the possibility of _scented balls_.
That seems like a weird joke, and yet many of these highly engineered and fairly expensive balls seem to not only be scented, but, for some, to come in a choice of scents (matching their colours to some degree).
It's essentially impossible to hook a ball you get at the alley. They are made of polyester and just slide across the oil. You also don't have fingertip grips drilled in them.
Pro's and bowling enthusiasts use the same type of ball (but fitted for their hand) for spares. You generally don't want a ball that can hook when trying to pick up a single pin. But strikes, a ball that can recover and angle towards the pocket and "roll over" right as it enters will store much of the energy you put into the ball and release it at just about the right time resulting in better strike odds.
That's fascinating, because I play competitive wiffle ball and we similarly scuff up new balls before using them- the curve characteristics are completely different vs a smooth one.
While i'd agree that it's not fun to get hit in the face with a hard rubber ball, all the foam balls I've ever used have a considerable amount of drag and are impossible to throw well.
Largely same - I wonder if such complexly engineered balls is why bowling has a falloff in popularity as a pro sport. The difference in how good two pro bowlers are is often fractions of a percent. Maybe a step back in technology would make the sport more interesting.
I've had holes drilled into multiple balls which were supposed to allow me to bowl comfortably with thumb inserted. I always ended up taking my thumb out of the ball and palm it instead, with my hand positioned in the opposite direction from normal. My latest ball is a bit lighter than the average one... 13 pounds... and there are only two holes which are drilled slightly deeper than normal. I don't know how many RPMs I'm putting on it, but it's definitely spinning faster than most people I've bowled with. After having watched a video, this guy looks to be doing much the same thing except he's stabilizing the ball with his other hand.
I learned to bowl this way from a friend of mine over 25 years ago and it's been a favorite ever since. My mom was a member of a bowling league at one point and I absolutely wore out her 11 pound ball when she stopped playing competitively.
Common mistake, but lawn bowling is very different than bocce. Bocce balls are uniform spheres that you can either roll or lob. They travel in a straight line. Lawn bowling balls are oblate spheroids that are weighted on one side so that they will always curve in a certain direction (more for light throws, so you can draw around a guard like in curling). They are always rolled. So it really is a lot more like curling than bocce, though granted there is nothing analogous to sweeping.
There are plenty of professionals that bowl two handed like that, including the most successful bowler of the past decade. It is a completely valid and accurate method to hook the ball a lot.
[1] https://brunswickbowling.com/bowling-centers/equipment-parts...
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