How To Choose A Bowling Ball

Posted by James Wood on September 22nd, 2019

While plastic house balls may be good enough for beginners, casual players who play at least once a week may want to choose a bowling ball of their own eventually.

There are many advantages to getting a custom ball. One advantage is that one can choose what material the bowling ball is going to be made out of.

Plastic (or, specifically, polyester) bowling balls are by far the most inexpensive and durable bowling balls available. For these reasons, house balls (those balls that bowling alleys let their customers use for free) are more often than not made out of plastic.

While being cheap and sturdy, these balls may be a bit lacking in performance under certain conditions. These plastic balls perform well on dry lane conditions, and if straight paths are desired.

This makes them adequate as spare balls since spares are usually thrown straight at the remaining pins.

However, because of the slickness of the material, there is very little friction between the plastic ball and the lane, leading to skidding. This skidding makes it harder to control the motion of the bowling ball and makes hooking much more difficult.

Hooking refers to intentionally making the ball follow a curved path, designed to hit the pins in the ideal spot. Strikes are usually achieved through hooked shots that hit the spaces between the headpin and the ones immediately to the left or to the right of it.

Thus, an interested player would do well to look at the other bowling balls available: urethane, reactive resin, and particle balls. These are listed in increasing order of traction, and hence hooking power.

Unfortunately, particle balls which offer the most control over both hooking and speed are also the most expensive ones. One should always consider one’s budget when looking at the better bowling balls.

Another advantage that customizing a bowling ball would yield is the custom drilling of finger holes. This can make the fit of a bowling ball much better than it would have been otherwise.

The holes made in the custom ball are specifically fitted to the player’s fingers, resulting in a better, more comfortable grip on the ball. In fact, this improved grip often means that players are able to use heavier balls with more striking power.

Lastly, customized designs are available for custom balls, ranging from the sober to the wacky. There are even clear plastic balls that can have playing cards, skulls, or alien heads embedded in them!

There are many possibilities, when choosing a bowling ball, both in terms of performance and in terms of style.