Del Warren was like a kid in a candy store.

“When urethane [made a comeback], it was like, ‘Oh, man! This is circa 1981! The Black Hammer!’”

Warren, the Director of Bowling and Head Bowling Coach of a Webber International bowling program that has won three Intercollegiate Team Championships titles under his tenure (2012, 2019 and 2024), recalls the St. Ambrose bowling program as one that got out ahead of urethane’s resurgence within the past decade — and did so in a manner so resourceful he marvels at it to this day.

At one college competition, Warren recalls, “St. Ambrose, I looked at their rack (which was speckled with urethane balls from a bygone era), and I said, ‘Where did you get those?’ He goes, ‘We found them in bowling centers and went and plugged them up.’” Warren chuckles in a tone of disbelief that, to this day, still colors the story as he tells it. “I said, ‘Man, I haven’t seen these go down the lane in 25 years! And, man, they’re rolling great!’”

Warren got home, and then he got thinking. Didn’t John Davis, the late founder of the Kegel Training Center in Lake Wales, Florida, where he is revered as a visionary and whose shadow continues to loom large over an establishment that embodies his legacy, have something along these lines in a closet on the premises?

He went digging around the place and soon found what he was looking for — “an original Blue Hammer with about eight inches of dust on it” languishing within the dark quiet of an otherwise inconspicuous closet.

“I think I took one of my high rev-rate guys, and I was like a kid again. I plugged it myself, I matched the color, I sanded it down — hitting it with 360 or 500 [grit], and I go, ‘Go throw this!’ He did, and his first reaction was, ‘This sucks!’

“‘Oh, no it doesn’t! You’ve got to change your angles a little bit,’” the USBC Gold coach advised. “And, all of the sudden, he was like, ‘Oh, man! I’ve got hold!’”

It was the kind of “Eureka!” moment an increasing number of bowlers were experiencing at the time, as have many more in the years since then, leading to a resurgence in the use of a line of equipment the industry thought it had left behind in an inferior era of bowling-ball technology.

The extent to which that presumption has been proven wrong culminated in scenes from college tournaments at which entire racks featured nothing but the same urethane ball, while reactives similarly took a back seat to urethane in major youth events such as the USBC Junior Gold Championships. In response, as we reported in our November 2025 issue, USBC enacted restrictions on Sept. 4 that, in part, ban urethane from all stages of the 2026 USBC Junior Gold Championships except qualifying, and also ban urethane from the 2026 USBC Intercollegiate Team and Singles Championships.

How to adjust to a playing environment in which the urethane balls with which players controlled ball motion — favoring a smoother, more arching motion off the backend in a manner that responded to friction more gradually than reactive equipment does — is no secret to the nation’s most accomplished coaches.

Environments restricting access to urethane equipment will be ones that demand of players a greater range of physical skill, a more nuanced understanding of bowling-ball layouts, and a wholesale rethinking of reactive equipment and arsenal assembly.

Players now might need to do with hand position, grip pressure, ball-speed manipulation, ball-surface alteration or loft, the things that urethane equipment might have done for them right out of the box. The 38-foot pattern that now will not be stretched to 43 feet by the carry-down urethane creates will have to “stretch” the pattern by different means — with abilities added to one’s physical skill set, layouts players might never have dreamed of trying with reactive equipment, and other measures that shift focus away from the ball and back to the bowler.

“It’s a problem that goes beyond college bowling,” says USBC Gold Coach Rick Wiltse. “I was in college bowling while working at Kegel and working with Webber International for more than 15 years. Over that time, I worked with a lot of young players, and also did lessons with older bowlers who were coming back to the game. Many of them had the same problems, even though they were from different generations, and part of that is the ball technology we have today —  including urethane.

“Technology in general, I think, has caused people to drift away from learning some of the physical-game skills and the techniques and tricks that were prevalent back in the old days — simply learning how to change hand positions, learning finger-pressure changes, and, one of my favorite ones that I think is undervalued, ball speed.”

Will Clark, a coach to numerous players who have advanced to the TV finals of the USBC Junior Gold Championships and PWBA Tour players who have won titles, observes that, these days, “You don’t see as many players being soft with the hand, taking their hand out of the ball a bit to try to control it a little bit more. Instead, they go the opposite direction of just trying to hit the holes as hard as they can.”

Wiltse, for his part, gets it.

“We’re inundated by the marketing of bowling balls, and by the adulation we get form our friends and girlfriends and boyfriends in college when we hook the ball and it just turns sideways. But, as we used to say in the old days, straighter is greater sometimes.”

If indeed that mantra is returning to relevance as urethane restrictions find their way into the competitive landscape, then the task that development represents is far from insurmountable. Here is a more specific look at five key adjustments youth and college players can make to their games that will meet the moment urethane regulation presents…

1. Learn to ‘Play the Whole Lane’
Mike Dias, a USBC Gold coach and three-time PBA50 Tour champion who attacks the lanes from the left side, explains that, “Part of the problem with urethane is that [players] are not learning how to play the whole lane. You’ve either got [right-handed] players who never play right of the second arrow, or players who never play left of the fourth arrow. More players have got to get used to playing the whole lane.”

One does not need access to fancy patterns or a lane man eager to indulge any ambitious youth bowler’s whims in that regard to figure this out. All it takes, Dias advises, is a house shot and a little initiative.

“One easy drill is to get lined up to strike on a house shot,” he says. Easy enough, right? OK. Consider Step 1 of this drill accomplished. Now, it is time to make things interesting. Ready?

“Just keep moving left,” Dias says, alluding to the scenario of a right-hander. “Either three and two, four and two — pick a number — and throw a couple strikes from there, and then move a half-an-arrow deeper. Try to figure out how to make the ball strike from there, and then keep going until you’re farther left than you’re comfortable.”

Define the terrain outside your comfort zone as radically as possible. Dias has in mind the need to move at least as deep as the fourth or fifth arrow. Hey, why not? Take a sniff at arrow six and see what you can do from there. Bumping up against that pesky ball return on the right lane as you keep moving deeper, right-handers? Well, Dias has a trick for you that you might never have deployed with urethane in your hands, but you just might need it come championship season at the college level and — who knows? — maybe match play at Junior Gold, both environments where urethane will be prohibited in 2026.

“Get to the point where you can take three steps in front of the ball return,” Dias imagines.

The art to such a tactic involves “learning the drop point,” Dias says. “I always like to feel as if, once the ball gets below my waist, I can initiate movement with my feet. The ball will be at the bottom of my feet by the time I get into the position, and then just take the other two steps.

Tactically, it’s about getting your body into the right alignment. Direction becomes so important and so difficult in that portion of the lane, which is why it’s a tough skill. You have to know how to align your body, and you’ve got to pick something at the pins to align your body to. At that point, it might just be trying to get it to the 3-6, or maybe just the 3 pin if they’re really tight in the middle and you’ve just got to throw it at the 3 pin for a right-hander.

“I don’t think it takes a lot of time to learn the technique; I think the tough part is getting your angles right.”

Dias hardly is the only PBA champion or Gold coach preaching the need to explore parts of the lane to which players ventured less frequently as the urethane resurgence took hold.

“I have a pattern that I designed where there’s a shot at 5, there’s a shot at 8, there’s a shot all the way across the lane,” says Warren, who calls this exercise “cycles.”

“What they have to do is hit the pocket from 3, and then shoot a 10 pin or a 7 pin. Then they have to move 5, then they move to 8, and throw a shot from there and then shoot an 8 pin. Then hit the pocket from 13 and shoot a 9 pin, and so on. Then, go all the way to 27, and then they have to come back all the way [to the other side of the lane]. So, they have to change their speed, their hand, their rotation, and make a spare.”

Warren says a reason to approach a practice session this way, rather than just shooting the same spare over and over again, is that it mimics the real-world environment in which you will not, for instance, be shooting 20 consecutive 10-pin spares without ever facing a full rack.

2. Send Your Game to New Heights — Literally
If you’re still looking for some area despite moving so deep that you’re standing in front of the ball return and taking three steps, well, you’re still not out of options.

Eight-time PBA Tour champion Marshall Kent arrived on tour in 2014 after having spent no small amount of time honing one of the most daring and aggressive loft games the pro ranks have seen. He did so at a time when urethane had not yet become the less flashy but at least as effective means of controlling ball motion and finding hold. That flash — much to the chagrin of some proprietors, it must be acknowledged — is a dynamic that experienced coaches absolutely expect to return to the competitive landscape with urethane prohibited in marquee events.

The idea here is a distinction between hitting up on, or elevating the ball in an upward motion, and projecting the ball forward out onto the lane. The difference between the two is stark, and marks a clear demarcation between disaster and dominance.

“The trick is that the ball has to hit the lane and accelerate. It has to push,” Warren advises. “If you do it wrong, the ball actually slows down and transitions too fast. It’s more of a projection than it is an upward motion. The easy way to teach it is, just stand a little taller and project the ball rather than hit up on it.”

At Webber, Warren intends to practice what he is preaching here, which is a testament to the necessity that urethane-restricted environments might place on the ability to loft the ball.

“We’re going to be spending more time this year lofting,” he says.

Dias sees lofting as a skill likely to come back into prominence because, “You’re going to have to use angle to create some push. If you take PBA Tour players and give them 5 feet of urethane carry-down as hold, they’re going to murder it. Now, you won’t have that built-in hold, so they will have to create that hold another way,” and lofting is likely to be among those ways.

3. Take Your Fingers Dancing
It’s possible that urethane restrictions might make it hard for players to stay in their favorite part of the lane as long as they are used to, but there are ways to stay there at least a few frames longer. Sometimes, that can make all the difference against stout competition.

“It may not be many shots, but if you can have four or five more shots in that favorite spot where you’re at your best, that, to me, is huge, both psychologically and physically. You don’t tense up. You’re not nervous. You’re not trying to force things. You’re in your own zone, doing your own thing,” Wiltse says.

How does this work? Apply a little, or less, finger pressure.

“If you put more finger pressure in general on your middle finger — just slightly more pressure; not squeezing it hard — doing that with just one finger versus the other finger can create generally more hook, more side or axis rotation, and it will be more reactive down-lane.”

Conversely, Wiltse says, “If the lanes are drying out and you want the ball to go longer and push down the lane, you can apply a little more pressure with your ring finger. Those pressure points — what I call finger dancing — is what the pros of the old days used to use. I grew up in those days as a youngster, and the pros in those days were teaching me things like that. The kids of today, I don’t think they have a clue about that. Guys like Chris Barnes, I think, do it all the time.”

4. Confront Your Preconceived Notions
As both Wiltse and Clark have said here, there is a certain mindset that pervades youth and college bowling today whereby many — not all, to be sure — impart upon the ball as many revs as they can muster in seemingly any environment. The controllability that urethane affords such players helped make this work, sometimes to spectacular effect.

Now? Success may not depend upon the extent to which you impose your will on the lane; it may depend upon your ability to give the lane what it is demanding of you. Sometimes, that won’t be a 520 rpm game.

“In my era of the tour, I was kind of middle of the road,” says Warren, who won two PBA Tour titles in the late 1980s and made a handful of telecasts at that time. “I was 320, 340 when I wanted to hit it. And I’m trying to get Brandon [Bohn] to back his hand down to 425!” Warren laughs, referring to his superstar player at Webber, a three-time USBC Junior Gold champion and son of 35-time PBA Tour champion Parker. 

Clark adds that, “A lot of times, even on the fresh, it’s about controlling the pocket. Being able to go up the back of the ball, kind of like a Walter Ray [Williams Jr.] or a Norm Duke type of game. But, when your rev rate is 460 to 530, it’s a little bit more difficult to do that.

“Well, speed is certainly going to be helpful, but you have to throw it pretty firm, and you have to learn to roll it differently. You have to be able to take a little off the ball. If your maximum rev rate is 520, can we get it down to maybe in the 460 range and still be accurate, so you can play the lanes that way, too?”

Clark turns to a golf metaphor here.

“I compare it to distances in golf. Just because I have a pitching wedge in my hand that I can use to hit it 140 yards, sometimes I have to be able to dial it back to hit it only 120 yards because I don’t have a 120-yard club in my bag. In bowling, being able to be a little softer with the hand and being nicer to the ball at the bottom so you’re putting fewer revs on the ball” might now go a longer way than it did with urethane.

As Wiltse puts it, “Don’t try to dominate the lane; give the lane what it wants. That goes back to watching your ball motion and saying, ‘Hey, what is the lane asking for us to do? Do we need more hook? Do we need less hook? Do we need the ball to slow down sooner, or later? What is the ball doing?’”

This is not theoretical. Real-world coaches are demanding this skill of their players in preparation for competition in real-world environments.

At a recent practice session with his Webber squad, “The caveat was, you’ve got to do spare cycles, but cut your rev rate by 50 percent — whatever it is. If your rev rate’s 350, you’ve got to go down to 175. Now, is it going to get to 175? No. But it’s going to stretch them in a direction where they have to go lower.”

Warren again turns his attention to his star player here, Brandon Bohn.

“Brandon hates to lay off of it,” he says. “And I say, ‘Brandon, when you lay off of it, it’s 425 or 450! You have to understand, when your dad and I bowled, I won a lot of tournaments laying off the ball with 200 rpms. At 425, you’re still in the 80th percentile!’ But he perceives it as if he is throwing it like someone who is very weak.”

As Clark observes, “I think a lot of it has to do with a mentality. It’s like you want to feel as though you have an edge in the game. The idea of doing less or being softer with the ball or softer with the hand, it doesn’t sit well with them. They’ve always hit the gas pedal as hard as they can, or they’ve always been swinging for the fences, getting to the point where they can hit it as hard as they can and throw it as hard as they can.”

Clark suggests a one-step drill or a three-step drill as ways to develop some feel for doing something other than “swinging for the fences.”

Think about it this way: The search for a urethane-like ball motion using reactives probably does not begin with 500 revs.

“This hasn’t been as much of a concern for anyone because everyone’s just gravitated toward urethane balls, but, right now, it might only be match play where you can’t use urethane at Junior Gold. The following year, you might not be allowed to use urethanes at all,” Clark reasons.

Even in the event that no such further restrictions actually transpire, proceeding with your practice sessions as if urethane is banned in a more wholesale manner probably is the best move for those looking to expand their set of physical skills.

5. ‘Your Whole Bag’s Got to Slow Down’
Dias foresees the need for Junior Gold and college players to completely rethink reactive equipment and assemble their arsenals accordingly.

“I don’t think players are geared towards putting those weaker ball motions in their bags — the late slow balls, or the early slow balls,” says Dias, a player who vividly remembers the days of the 1970s when he had to pipe plastic up the lane at a firm speed in an environment that featured 25 percent of today’s oil volume.

“If you look at the fact that there is much higher oil volume on the lanes today, and with very worn lane surfaces, the challenge is really to get the ball to slow down. You need balls that want to pick up early, but they’re very slow in their response to friction, so they make as smooth a motion as you can get.

“On the right side of the lane, you’ve got a lot of built-in friction on the lane surface, and people are so used to combatting that friction that, as soon as they grab reactives, they’re trying to get the ball down the lane. But with short patterns, you’ve got to get it to slow down and blend out.”

So, how does one accomplish these things without urethane equipment? Well, “If you forget about urethane and you look at the ball motion that urethane gives you, it’s very early and very slow. Once it picks up, there’s not a big change in direction at all. You’ve just got to mimic that motion.”

While Dias thinks ball manufacturers will step in to fill that niche, in the meantime there always is the magic of that trusty drill press and a pro-shop operator you trust.

“Players have to be smarter about what kinds of balls they put in their bags — especially college players, who, if you take the spare ball out, now you’re looking at four balls. For the guys, one of those balls was always a urethane option. I think now one of those four balls has got to be something weak and smooth, and maybe they add some surface and still control it.”

Which is a thought that really had little place in a competitive landscape in which urethane filled that slot in any bowler’s arsenal.

“Now, they have to fill that slot with a weaker, smoother reactive with surface,” says Dias. “The whole bag’s got to slow down a little bit in terms of ball motion at the back.”

Dias sees asymmetric and pearl bowling balls taking a more prominent place in ball arsenals “because you don’t have the weight hole to lean on, so you can’t create an asymmetric, pin-down ball out of a symmetric ball anymore using the hole.”

Now, Dias advises, “You’ve got to use that built-in asymmetry, but throw that asymmetry into a place where it either gets stable really quick and goes forward, or gets stable really late and creates a really slow response to friction down-lane.”

Dias has in mind experimenting with both short-pin and long-pin layouts on reactive equipment.

“Bowlers, including myself, used to go to those short-pin layouts on shorter patterns,” he says. But don’t discount long-pin layouts, either.

“You start to get to 5 ½, or 5 ¾ pins and you move the mass bias out quite a bit, that makes the ball want to respond very quickly. The block gets very stable very fast and it wants to go forward. For me, one layout that I’ve been playing with is a 5 ½-inch pin by 2 ½ by 4 ½.”

Dias sees the need to assemble an arsenal featuring a greater variety of ball motions that bowlers might have been used to assembling when packing urethane, and rethinking reactives by working with weaker options or collaborating with a trusted pro-shop operator to layout reactive equipment in ways that might furnish players with the kind of controlled ball motion off the backend that urethane enabled.

Final Thoughts
One thing coaches make clear is this: The players who get to work now are the players who will succeed down the line when they find themselves in those urethane-restrictive environments come 2026.

Now, here in December, months out from Junior Gold or the ITCs, is the time to sharpen one’s ability to manipulate ball speed or hand position, develop greater aptitude for altering ball surfaces and getting a feel for the ball motions various grits enable, exploring parts of the lane that, for some players, have been unchartered territory in an era increasingly dominated by urethane balls, tinkering with those “finger-dancing” techniques, and having more intentional conversations with credible pro-shop operators.