BY MIKE DEVANEY

People just think lanes break down, but that’s not necessarily how it happens. Once a lane is oiled, as soon as the first ball is thrown on it, it’s no longer a static environment. Now it’s a fluid environment; it’s always changing.

That’s what people kind of get hung up on. ‘I did this yesterday,’ or, ‘This is what I do at this house,’ and when that doesn’t really work, they get stuck.

There is a lot of educated guessing that goes on. You have to understand where the oil is going and what it’s doing. The bowling balls themselves absorb the oil; they also move the oil around on the lane, so every time you throw the ball down the lane, there is a lesson to be learned.

And today, there’s just much more oil on the lane, and the more oil that is applied to the lane surface, the less static the playing environment becomes. With less oil, it is a more static environment because not as much change can happen, which means not as much transition occurs.

With more oil on the lane, we have to be much more aware of our environment and watch every single ball that goes down the lane to see what’s happening.