High-Tech Rollers

Time Mag ^ | 1 Jan 2006 | Michael Lemonick

[JRios1968]

Each year nearly 70 million Americans hit the lanes, making bowling the most popular participatory sport in the U.S. But for serious players with the latest equipment, it's a whole new game

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.

[coconutt2000]

If you're good... you only need one bowling ball, and only one try per frame.

[Pontiac]

If you're good... you only need one bowling ball, and only one try per frame.

I am sure you mean this in a farcical sense.

I have been a bowler for 30 years and have never met a “good” bowler who came to the lanes with one ball.

Even mediocre bowlers today come out with at least two balls.

Only a novice or a purely uncompetitive (one there to socialize) bowler brings one ball to the lanes.

With the modern lane conditions and highly technical ball materials you can not be competitive with one ball.