Back Ground

In September 1996, the Foundation was born with a meeting at Kegel of lanemen who had experience taking care of competitive tournaments in the US . After a week of discussions and sharing of experiences, the group came to the conclusion that we could no longer guarantee a lane condition that would be accepted by the contestants, coaches and observers as fair and equitable. In 1997, we made a report to the System of bowling task force that we could no longer do our jobs for competitive bowling with the current state of specifications, formats, lane topography, worn lanes, conditioners, and style diversity.

Why? In the last 30 years bowling has evolved without guidance. Some say it has actually mutated out of control. The lanes, the bowling balls, the pins, the oils, and the patterns have changed. As a result, the styles of play have diversified greatly.

In 1999, at the World Bowling Seminar called by President PS Nathan in Malaysia , a new technical committee was formed. We were given the task of finding out what happened to bowling and what could be some possible solutions.

Starting point

Our first task was to define the talents the best bowler must have in light of all the technological and social changes the game has gone through in the last few decades. Our model of the best bowler can be defined as follows:

The report given by Coach Craig Woodhouse of Canada asked the question, "Why only one pattern for a tournament?" The Technical committee followed this thought for two days, from morning till late at night, and suggested to the WTBA that we should use multiple conditions and change the formats for World events. More than one condition tests the athlete on all 5 of the points that define the best bowler. A single condition does not.

In addition, because of the report of Jose Castro from Brazil , we also suggested that the ball must have been introduced 90 days before the start of the event and that only 4 balls should be registered and used. The reason was to equalize the economic disparity between countries and adjust for the time delay of receiving the newest balls to some areas of the world. I'll leave this to another report.

Course of Action

At the meeting Len Nicholson and I hatched the idea of running Foundation Games using the multiple condition and changes in the format to accommodate the multiple conditions concept. We volunteered our time, experience, and finances to do this. I might add that since 1999 we have run 18 tournaments, 5 prototypes and 13 Foundation games, including two zone championships. These tournaments were held at Kegel, at PBA regional events, at the American Zone championships, and the Asian Federation Championships. Several other experimental tournaments have also been held that were not under the personal control of the Foundation and Kegel. The American Zone Youth Championships used two conditions with Ruben Gharigossian, member of the WTBA and the American Zone Technical Committees, in charge of the conditions. Jack Eadalar, director of the NBF, has run several tournaments in the Netherlands on multiple conditions. Johnson Chang from Manila has run 3 Manila opens on multiple conditions with huge success. The Pharos Open in Egypt was run on multiple conditions in 2001.

Conclusion

Every single bowling tournament was right with the times. There is no other way to go. For the last 2 years the pattern committee has had an increasingly more difficult time choosing the pattern to be used. In fact, I simply do not want to do this anymore. Life is way too short to keep trying to accomplish the impossible. Chance plays too big of a part.

Another Subject of fair play

Another subject of equality to be faced is the fact that multiple conditions take away the advantage of the specialist who dominates on any given distance or pattern, therefore it puts the pressure on the athlete to be good at all 5 requirements and not just 2 or 3. However, this does not address the disparity of the challenge to right handed and left handed bowlers entirely.

Besides the obvious difference of left versus right in the number of games and the condition of the lane, there is the problem that the number of decisions the right handers must face is 5 times that of the left handers. With multiple conditions it forces the left handers to make more decisions than they have in the past. It does not correct the lanes themselves, for they can give advantage left-right. The experience of over 1500 high level tournaments tells us that the left handers will learn, because their problem is one fifth of what the right handed players experience, even if the lane itself is equal on both sides.

Symmetrical conditions will no longer work on the world stage. It occurred in the PBA, it occurs in scratch tourneys of high level in the US, and it occurred in the WRM for the last two years. It occurs in the Super Sixxxxxx in Sweden . It also occurred in the Asian Games in Korea . We can no longer use symmetrical patterns for World events. In 1999 it was OK. In 2002, it is no longer OK. Why, because the diversity in styles has increased. No longer does everyone play the same area of the lane. The depleted areas created in the oil pattern no longer make the right side easier, they now make the right side more confusing.

We predicted that the world stage had entered into the left-right problem because the right handers were beginning to spread farther apart (20-5 at the arrows) just like the US . We suggested a pattern for the Asian Games that gave less hold to the left handers. It was rejected. We suggested a pattern that gave the left handers less swing. It was rejected. Both rejections were from a lack of experience. Left handers had an advantage of one more strike every 3 games on the symmetrical pattern. That is all it takes to make a tournament seem unfair left-right. Wow!

More History

In Denmark last year at the big meeting there was a buzz of the impending confrontation. That was not the most important thing that occurred. The Congress approved the zones using the new suggestions on a voluntary basis.

The American Zone and the Asian Bowling Federation both did just that. However, the tournament committee did not approve a change in the format other than allowing multiple conditions. We fit two conditions into the existing format as best we could. The rub came from singles and doubles. Since the rules stated that we must bowl 6 games in one squad for both these events, there was some obvious inherent unfairness, but in trios and the 5 man events no basic unfairness was found.

Final Thought

I have a question:

"Since the physical and social environments of our sport have changed as much as they have over the last two decades, why have we not changed the ways and means of how we conduct our competition to match the present?"

~BY: JOHN DAVIS.~