High-Tech Rollers

By Text by Michael D. Lemonick

[This article contains a complex diagram -- Please see hardcopy of magazine or PDF.] Bowling has come a long way since Edward III of England banned the sport in 1366 because it was distracting his soldiers from archery practice. Bowling dates back at least to the Pharaohs, although for the first few thousand years, the game remained pretty much unchanged. You rolled a ball made of stone or wood or rubber at a bunch of pins and hoped for the best.

Over the past couple of decades, however, engineers armed with an array of high-tech materials and sophisticated ideas about angular momentum and moments of inertia have transformed the sport--and, most notably, the bowling ball. Nowadays the ball comes with a dizzying array of options, each imparting a different spin and roll. So where serious bowlers used to carry just one ball to the lanes, they now haul around half a dozen or more to be ready for whatever conditions they might encounter. "It's just like a golfer carrying 14 different clubs," says Bill Wasserberger, director of R&D for consumer products at Brunswick Bowling, the nation's oldest and biggest manufacturer of bowling balls.

The effect of all that technology can be seen in the upward creep of average scores recorded by the Professional Bowlers Association. And like innovations in other sports--composite golf clubs, big-headed tennis rackets--they are starting to catch on among amateurs as well. The major U.S. manufacturers sold more than a million high-tech balls last year.

Ball Basics

The first 30 ft. to 40 ft. of each lane are protected with oil, the rest is dry and no two alleys are the same. Making a ball curve into the pins the way you want depends on several key factors

ANATOMY OF A STRIKE Anyone can throw a strike by hitting the pocket just to the right or left of the No. 1, or front, pin. But doing it consistently requires an understanding of how the ball travels

SKID 1 to 3 ball revolutions On the first, oiled stretch, called the heads, the ball slides more than it rolls, moving more or less in a straight line

ROLL 3 to 6 ball revolutions The region where the oil thins out is called the splice. The ball begins rolling, and any tendency to curve starts taking hold

HOOK 6 to 9 ball revolutions In the dry backend, friction is at a maximum. The ball rotates fastest, and the hook becomes most pronounced

STRIKE! You need lots of pin action to knock them all down. Adjusting hand positions and release points can maximize your chances

Sources: Brunswick; Storm; Bowling: How to Master the Game