Southern Lanes
Sarasota, FL
Pattern E3 was used for this tournament. This is the pattern that forces you to get the ball outside the first arrow, if you expect to keep up with the rest of the guys. (If you would like to see this and all of the patterns used by the PBA, go to www.pba.com and click on Lane Conditions). Although less than 1/3 of the players averaged over 200, most of the players were playing the same basic area. This pattern does not oil the first 2 boards on the right and the first 1 ½ boards on the left. If you bowl in a tournament, using pattern 5, do not even try to have your ball react inside of 5 because it will only go straight.Blue Line = Tape taken at 15 feet
Yellow Line = Tape taken at 25 feet
Red Line = Tape taken at 33 feet
Left handers should play this pattern a little straighter than the right handers because they have slightly less of a build up of oil in the L3 - L8 area at 15 feet, starting with slightly more oil outside, giving the ball a little more skid. Although we had 2 left handers in the finals, some had a tougher time because they tried to swing it too much. As you can see in the After Qualifying graphs for both A squad and B squad, some of the players were still right of L8 at 33 feet and this is too far in.
The right handers throughout the tournament were playing R8 to R14 at 15 feet, out to R6 to R10 at 25 feet and outside of R6 at 33 feet. In match play, you can see that the players got the ball outside of R6 at 25 feet, giving their ball a chance to react as it got further down the lane.
Norman Simard
Laneman for the Southern Region
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Pattern E3 Fresh
A Squad after qualifying
B Squad after qualifying
Match Play after 8 games
Match Play after second 8 games