Southern Lanes
Surfside, SC
This week we used pattern B2. You can look at the machine settings for pattern B at pba.com (click on Lane Conditions). This pattern is 43 feet long and will usually play pretty tight on this surface, which it did. This pattern forces you to play inside of 10 with a breakpoint of 8 - 12 for righties and 10 - 14 for lefties. Most lefties that made the finals from all 3 squads played the lanes as they should have. I did see one lefty play outside of 5 who made it. On Sunday, the tournament leader, who was left handed attempted to play more left of where he played on Saturday and failed to advance. On A squad there were a lot of non members who have not seen this pattern very often, or ever, and the graphs indicate that they were all over the place on the lanes creating a flatter breakdown in the pattern. I believe there were more players trying to play too far right of where this pattern dictates. B squad and C squads both had more experienced players and the graphs show that they both dug a hole in the pattern that boosted the scores. Both squads were setting the ball down at 15 feet from C20 - L16. At 25 feet they were between R15 - R18 and just outside of R12 to about R8 at 41 feet. On Sunday most of the players that kept advancing were playing the lanes the same as they did on Saturday. There will be no more graphs taken Sundays under the new format because each round is contested on a fresh pair of lanes, with only 3 - 5 games bowled per pair. And, since there is no crossing it would only indicate where 2 players were playing instead of the group as a whole.Norman Simard
Laneman for the Southern Region
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Pattern B2 Fresh
A Squad after qualifying
B Squad after qualifying
C Squad after aualifying