Why oil patterns at bowling alleys are so important, even for novices like me

I'm gonna take a break from writing about my dreams and the expat of Vietnam for a bit even though I still live in Vietnam and I once again had very vivid dreams last night about waking up somewhere without my wallet or phone and didn't even know where I was.

On our last DUMBO (our bowling group here in DaNang) bowling outing, I returned to form and got the 3rd highest score of the 20 people in attendance with a 168 as my highest score. I also got 3 strikes in a row winning me the coveted "gobbler" award for the first time in many moons. We are a childish bunch so the gobbler award is a squeaky chew toy intended for dogs but honestly, it is one of the most sought-after awards we have in our group.

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I originally bought this thing for Nadi, my dog, but as it turns out the sound it makes, like most sounds that most things make, scares her, so we repurposed it as an award for our favorite sport here in Da Nang.

The gobbler can change hands at any time in our weekly meetups whereas all the other awards are just a once daily kind of thing. If you get three strikes in a row by frame 3, you have done very well for yourself. It doesn't mean that you are going to keep the award though because someone else on another lane could be working in a double strike waiting for their attempt at a third. The shortest amount of time that a person has held this award is less than 1 minute because a situation just like I am describing happened.

Anyway, I am getting off topic here. The reason why I was able to bowl so well at the last outing was because of one very important factor that was just right that day: They had oiled the lanes properly. I bowl with a hook because I try to emulate the pros and if all of them are doing it, there must be something to it, right? Well if you bowl with a hook and the oil is done improperly, your game simply isn't going to work.

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I only started to become intimately familiar with how oil patters on lanes are supposed to be once I moved to Asia because they take the sport a lot less seriously here than we do in USA and therefore much of the time they don't even bother with the oil at all. For someone that hooks like I do, not enough oil, too much oil, or in some instances the complete absence of oil can totally throw off my game. I have been bowling with a hook for over 30 years: So long in fact, that I am nearly incapable of rolling the ball perfectly straight and this is a real problem for me if I have leftover pins on a spare pickup over on the right hand side (I am right-handed and ONLY bowl right to left).

The above imagine isn't 100% correct because there is normally no oil at all for the first 1-foot of the lane and this is simply to prevent people from busting their asses if thy step over the fault line. You will also notice that the last nearly 1/2 of the lane has no oil at all. This is the reason why a spinning ball heading down the lane doesn't really move right to left until just before the pins. This is also why people who roll more slowly can get more hook on the ball. Try it sometime if you are at a properly oiled lane, if you roll slowly and focus on getting a lot of spin you can hook from one end of the lane to the other. This obviously isn't ideal because you need forward momentum to knock down a bunch of pins as well.

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Pro bowling is an entirely different kettle of fish and on many of the televised events they will used blue oil so that the audience can see where the oil is and actually how much it "travels" throughout a game. As you can imagine, a busy bowling alley is going to end up with a bunch of oil getting carried down the lanes from people being there all day is going to make the back end oily as well, and this is going to screw up any hook-shot people like me.

For me, since my hook isn't terribly profound, I will normally aim at the second from the gutter on the right arrow and dot because the oil patterns, if done correctly are still there, but there isn't so much of it. This mean that my ball will start to hook a bit earlier as the ball struggles against physics to get a grip on the wood below, it also means that if I throw the ball correctly and in the right place, that it is going to hook just the right amount to get me between the 1 and 3 pocket, or do what I call a "drive by" and knock the 1/2/4/7 causing a wave of sorts to the right.

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If the oil isn't done the day of my arrival and they are using yesterday's oil, you can be assured that the oil is just all over the place and therefore my, and everyone else that bowls with a hook's style isn't going to work because the oil will be everywhere, when it isn't supposed to be on the back 1/3 of the lane at all. You can't get friction if the oil goes all the way down. Also, over time the oil is simply removed from the lane entirely because it ends up on the balls and is removed by people wiping down their ball.

These two factors irritate the hell outta me and this is part of the reason why we go in the morning just 1 hour after the bowling alley has opened. We also demand that they oil the lanes the day that we go since we generally fill up the entire bowling alley when we do go. Whether or not they actually do it is something that most of our members don't care about, but I will notice right away.

I've been told that this heavy oil in the middle and light oil on the outside is actually by design a system to help bowlers do better because no matter if you are right or left handed, and no matter how you throw, provided you aren't a knucklehead who aims for the gutter, the oil is meant to keep your shot as centralized as possible.

For people that don't understand how the oil works or why it is there, this is why they are so confused when a ball that appears to be heading towards the head pin takes a turn as the ball gets closer to the pins. This is because there isn't supposed to be any oil there!

In my particular situation, a typical house oiling pattern helps me to maintain getting in the pocket because even if I release slightly out of where I intend to, the heavier oil concentration in the middle prevents me from getting wildly out of position.

I don't know who was in charge of the lane oiling at our last outing, but that person did a very good job and I hope they put him in charge of that every week. It really does make a difference and this is why people like me get grouchy when the oiling clearly hasn't been maintained, or is done incorrectly.

We don't have much room for complaining here since it costs $4 for 2 hours of bowling, but in the west I would imagine that people expect it to be done perfectly every single time.