This is a new topic for Rudy’s Corner:  bowling!   While I’m nowhere near a good bowler, I did have fun on a couple of leagues I joined a few years ago.  With my recent shoulder injury, I’m still unable to bowl, at least until things heal a bit further.

On one of my last bowling trips, though, I had just gotten a ball plugged and drilled.  I picked up a lightly used ball on eBay a few years ago, a Track Dry Heat, a ball that was designed with some extra action for use on dry lanes.  When I’ve gone open bowling in recent years, the lanes have always been on the dry side–with no league play going on, the bowling centers usually will only oil the lanes once a day to keep the lanes from burning up.  I was previously using an Ebonite Nitro/R2 that had gotten a little long in the tooth.  How did the Dry Heat compare?

I’ve only bowled one session with the Dry Heat, and I’m going to say it was a bit of a success.  I bowled my usual poor games for the first couple of frames, trying to “dial in” my moves so that I could at least throw it decently.  In the third game, though, I’d gotten some good pinfalls, and beginning with the 7th frame, I wound up getting strikes to finish out the game.  As I was on a roll, I continued on into my fourth game, and the first five right out of the gate were strikes as well.  In a couple of shots, I had touched the bumpers (the kids were with me), but still, to fire off that many good strikes was amazing.  As I want to keep the Dry Heat as a dry-lane ball, I’m keeping the coverstock polished to make up for the lack of oil on the lanes.  (The Nitro/R2 I had kept in a rough finish so it would grab the lane in heavier oil conditions.

I can see myself getting another ball in the near future, one that I can set up for use in heavier oil.  But in its current state, the Dry Heat just had an unbelievable “snap” in the backend when the revs slowed down.  I did not realize, until throwing the Dry Heat, how tired the Nitro/R2 was.  I was beginning to think it was all my own doing, but I realize now that I was fighting a ball that was well past its prime.  I also tried the original plastic Columbia I purchased when I first got on a league–there was nothing I could do to make that ball react.

I’ll never be a 300 bowler (I know, never say “never”), but it was nice to be able to fire off so many strikes.  With regular practice, I could become a lot more consistent with the Dry Heat.