Southern Lanes
Fort Pierce
A squad dominated the qualifying for this tournament for 1 reason. Nearly all of the players played the same line. Most started (15 feet) around R19 to R16, with nearly all starting between 20 and R13. At 27 feet, nearly all players were between R14 and R10. This allowed these players to play the edge of the oil pattern throughout the day. Even at 40 feet, most of these players were together, playing between R8 and R6. There were a lot less people crossing each others line so the pattern depleted itself right to left, without developing an "out of bounds" condition.B squad had a lot of players playing L16 to R13 (15 feet). This created a dryer condition in the head area. At 27 feet the breakdown was a little wider than A squad, R18 to R11, constantly breaking down the hold area, and also creating a little "out of bounds" to the right. At 40 feet the depletion is scattered with no defined area of depletion.
C squad started playing in a little further at 15 feet, playing L12 to R18. A little bit of a hold area was created because most players were in the R16 to R12 area but that was little inside the edge of the oil pattern and this created an "out of bounds" to the right. At 40 feet most were at R11 to R6. This squad played the lanes a little more consistent than B squad but not as good as A. Hence you had 9 from A squad, 2 from B squad and 5 from C squad.
There are always a lot of other factors that create squad equity in each tournament. This tournament had a lot of "experienced" players, both from the National tour and from the regional level bowling on A squad. Plus, when you come in and see 9 scores above 200 over, this will intimidate a lot of inexperienced players and force them to press a little harder than they might if the scores were lower.
The above analysis did not include the left side because there was not enough left side depletion to create a defined pattern. The left handers that I witnessed were playing the edge of the oil pattern but there were not enough of them to create any kind of swing area as the day progressed. 1 left hander made match play and several others had the opportunity to make it but came up short at the end.
In Match Play, the righties set the ball down (15 feet) at L19 or L13, with most rolling it through R16 and out to about R10 area. This did create an out of bounds area to the right and I did witness some of the guys missing a little right and not hitting the head pin late in the day. But there was a good hold area that the players could depend on throughout the day. Again the 1 left hander that made the cut used the oil pattern well and set the ball down where most of the right handers were and road the edge of the oil pattern out to about 12 with good success.
Norman Simard
Laneman for the Southern Region
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A Squad before bowling
A Squad after bowling
B Squad before bowling
B Squad after bowling
C Squad before bowling
C Squad after bowling
Championship Squad before bowling
Championship Squad after bowling