Technology's Gutterball—New Gear Makes Bowling Too Easy

My father was one of the greatest professional bowlers of all time. Seriously. Billy Hardwick: PBA Hall of Fame, Player of the Year in '63 and '69, and the first winner of the triple crown of bowling, among other things. My parents met at my maternal grandfather's bowling center, where my dad competed. They even named me after their dear friend Chris Schenkel, the color commentator for ABC's Pro Bowlers Tour.

And me? For the first 13 years of my life I spent five hours a day on the lanes. I bowled exhibition matches on TV — The Mike Douglas Show (against Jimmy "JJ" Walker), The Richard Simmons Show (it was weird), Captain Kangaroo (hot, right?). Had I not discovered D&D and videogames, I might well have become the Tiger Woods of bowling (but with a hilariously lower salary).

To this day I remain a careful observer of the game. While the liberal media elite depict the bowler as a chubby guy with a comb-over and polyester pants, the reality is that bowling is one of the most tech-heavy sports today. Robotic pinsetters and computerized scoring were just the beginning. Today, synthetic lane surfaces (designed to look like wood) provide a more consistent plane than their organic forebears. Balls made of reactive resin have the ability to grab lanes through the oil layer for harder hooking into the pocket — which conserves more of that sweet kinetic energy for the pins, thereby increasing the likelihood of fist-pumping and woot-woot-ing in bowling centers across America. And I hate all of it.

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.

It turns out that the sport's governing body, the United States Bowling Congress, is just as worried as I am. In Greendale, Wisconsin, at a climate-controlled facility that was almost certainly well-stocked with funnel cakes, the USBC deployed a 7-foot-tall robot named Harry. Armed with laser guides, hydraulics, and a mechanical arm, Harry's job was to bowl with the precision of a machine. As an engineer controlled release points, axis tilt, speed, and rotation, 23 sensors along the lane measured things like position and velocity. The goal, according to the USBC, was "to strike a better balance between player skill and technology." I am pretty sure the "strike" pun was intended.

The results, released earlier this year, were undeniable: Bowling ball composition had to be reined in. Starting in April 2009, precise limits will be set on how porous a competition ball's cover stock can be, standardizing how it adheres to the lane. Technology will be hobbled for the sake of the game.

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.

Full disclosure: I took five Wii bowling breaks during the writing of this article. I'm currently averaging around 260.