The first of Xtra Frame's World Series of Bowling Pre-Game shows, hosted by Jackie Bowling, will be airing on the PBA's youtube channel later today and the main theme of those shows is always how the players choose to break the lanes down to give them the best possible chance of competing.
There are really two categories of thought when it comes to the strategy of "grooming" the lanes during the 15 minutes of warm-up the players are given prior to the start of the shows.
The first is the school of "make the lanes better for myself" category, which entails carving out a spot on the lane (typically just right of the intended line you plan to play - for righties of course, opposite for lefties) that will allow you to have some mistake area on the lane (typically a little room - about a board - to miss left and right).
The other school of thought is to utilize a strategy that is intended to make it more difficult for your opponents, with the idea that you will either have an advantage in terms of mistake area, or will simply "out-bowl" your opponent in terms of the quality of your shots.
The biggest theme on the shows from the World Series is that one kind of player (most specifically Jason Belmonte) wreaks so much havoc on the lanes, that, unless a lot of care is taken in how a particular player grooms the lanes, Belmonte will eventually have a big advantage the longer he is able to last on the show. Let me show you why:
Starting with the first two diagrams on the left, you can see the oil pattern when it is fresh, and then the lines that two players will typically want to start playing. The red line represents a player like Belmonte, who likes to hook the ball a lot, while the green line represents where players with lower rev rates (like Mika) like to play.
After a given amount of time, a "Burn" spot will develop in the front part of the lane, combined with a "Carrydown" spot down the lane. The problem for the straighter players, is that after a period of time, suddenly there will be a dry area to their left in the front part of the lane, and an oily area to their right down the lane. This is exactly the opposite situation of what a player is looking for, because now shots that start left will hook more, while shots that start right will hook less.
In the meantime, the Belmonte-like player will simply move further left, and will have more dry to the right and more oil to the left down lane. The real problem for other players is that they simply do not have the speed, rev rate or ability to loft the ball over the dry fronts that would allow them to take advantage of the new configuration of oil.
This theme will recur over and over again as the shows progress, and you'll observe the players and their ball reps discussing the progression of it during practice and then throughout the matches on the telecasts. It really is the entire ball game and when you see a player struggling, it is usually not because "they suck" (as is usually the uninitiated viewer's reaction), but it's more that they just happened to be caught "between moves." If you gave them another game to figure it out, they would more than likely come back with a big score. Unfortunately, on TV, there usually isn't another game because one bad one almost always spells the end of your run.
Be sure to pay close attention to this as the shows unfold, and tune in every Wednesday to the PBA's social networking sites during the week of each of the WSOB telecasts for Jackie Bowling's Pre-Game shows to see the interesting gamesmanship of how the players groom the lanes unfold.
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