PBA EXPERIENCE - EARL ANTHONY



Earl Anthony - 40'

We switch to the Earl Anthony pattern this week after two weeks on Shark. We bowled on it in last summer's Sport Challenge 23 but I was on vacation for those two weeks. I hoped to collect some useful tips and videos to post here as I did for the other patterns we've played but there's not much available for the Earl Anthony pattern. Thus, I'm in the same bind as last year when I posted this. However, I did find one useful tip from a former professional bowler here and the lane diagram to the left.

Diablo Valley Bowl had a communications mix-up Sunday morning as they dressed the lanes with Shark instead of Earl Anthony. I would have bowled on it anyway but I had a tournament in Pinole at noon so I left. Peter was there also and he stayed to bowl. Thankfully, Diablo got everything sorted out in time for the Sunday night practice session. I came back after the tournament, as did Peter, and we bowled six games. We had some struggles and our scores weren't very high but we still learned a few things from it. It probably didn't help that we were fatigued from bowling a lot of games earlier in the day.

I used a different ball for each game and found I got the best reaction from the balls for medium and medium-to-heavy oil. The Raptor Talon (solid - heavy oil) was a bit too aggressive. When I caught the headpin, it was often right through the nose for a split. My Sigma Tour (solid - medium oil), Sigma Hybrid (hybrid - medium-to-heavy oil), and Primal TV4 (pearl - medium-to-heavy oil) were fairly easy to control and I hit the 1-3 pocket frequently with them. The Ascent Solid and Ascent Pearl for light oil weren't aggressive enough. With them I left fair number of buckets (2-4-5-8) with light hits and washouts when I came up short of the headpin.

As it was with the Shark pattern, I found that if I swing the ball out wide, it's not coming back. Hi-rev bowlers like Jim and Stephen McEachran can get away with that but not us strokers. The tip provided by the former pro appears to be on target. Peter and I both found ways to hit the pocket through targets between the first and third arrows.