After the recent Mark Roth Plastic Ball Championship, I wrote here that I would rather see bowlers required in all elite level tournaments to use bowling balls with polyester coverstocks and simple layouts so that the sport would downplay the importance of bowling ball technology and return to emphasizing a bowler's physical and mental skills. It seems that Chris Hardwick, the multi-talented son of bowling legend Billy Hardwick, agrees and would like to see bowlers at all levels subject to the same restrictions.
Hardwick, who writes articles for Wired magazine, penned a provocative article in Oct, 2008 that is fun and interesting reading. In Technology's Gutterball: New Gear Makes Bowling Too Easy, Chris, who was named after famed bowling announcer Chris Schenkel, writes about growing up on course to become the "Tiger Woods of bowling (but with a hilariously lower salary)" until Dungeons and Dragons and videogames altered his destiny. However, he says that he remains "a careful observer of the game" and that he 'hates' what he sees.
He hates the fact that modern reactive resin and other high tech bowling balls have made 300 games and high averages pretty much meaningless:
These new balls and surfaces mean more strikes, which means higher scores and more perfect games. By some counts, amateur bowlers can average 40 pins higher per game than a professional bowler did 40 years ago — and that's not because of some recently evolved mutation in the human bowling gene. Look, we all want to excel at bowling. How else would we attract potential sex partners? Not to go all Harrison Bergeron on you, but when everyone bowls perfect games, then no one bowls a perfect game. Sure, other sports have tech. A titanium shaft and weighted clubhead will let you hit 300-yard drives until your spine unhinges, but they'll still slice. With bowling, the equation is simpler. More tech equals more strikes.
Hardwick later, with tongue probably only halfway in cheek, writes this about the USBC's proposal to limit the porousness of bowling balls after April, 2009:
As a purist of the sport, I'm grateful for the change. We should have to earn our marks the way our daddies (or, at least, mine) did: with hard rubber balls on wood, a hot lamp over the scoring table burning our hands and faces, and watered-down American beer lubricating each frame until we go home smelling like an ashtray in a chemical plant. "Keep yer got-damn science off mah balls!" we'll cry, and life will be good and pure and true.
Call me the old fuddy-duddy that I am, but I agree with Hardwick, except for the hot lamps and cigarette smoke.
Chris' dad Billy in a 1969 Miller High Life beer commercial.
