INTERVIEW WITH JOHN JANAWICZ FROM THE KEGEL COMPANY

The inaugural Swedish Super-Sixxx Tour has contracted the Kegel Company from Florida to take care of the lane maintenance at all its stops. We caught up with their representative John Janawicz (JJ) at the second stop held during September in Gothenberg.

The Kegel Company are currently contracted to provide lane conditions for the PBA and a number of other major tournaments in North America. They provided the lane conditioning for the recent UAE Open, and as I write this (!), they have been awarded the impending FIQ World Championships.

JJ's worked for the Kegel Company for some fourteen months. He's been a bowler for a fair few years, competing in the 'mega bucks' tournaments (e.g., Hi-Roller, Eliminator, Super Hoinke) and been a part of a couple of World Team Challenge teams.

He told me, "My parents and I moved to a place just two hours away from John Davis' (the founder of the Kegel Company) facility in Sebring, Florida. He used to hold monthly tournaments there, ten-game sweepers, and I'd go down there every month because he'd run a great tournament, the best I'd ever seen. He'd always put out different conditions and be watching ball reactions of the bowlers to try and understand more. I was interested in looking at all the different graphs he'd give us and try to understand how best to bowl on the lanes. He'd do a lot of different things, and the scoring base maybe 250 or it maybe 200".

I asked JJ about some of the other things he'd done in bowling. "I was a pin-chaser at Shore Lanes in Marin Island, before working at the reception desk. Then I did lane maintenance at the ABC tournaments in Reno where I learnt more and more about lane maintenance. When I came back home, John Davis had an opportunity for someone to work out on the PBA Tour".

What about the history of the Kegel Company itself? "John Davis opened his bowling centre in Sebring around 1983. He built his first lane machine, The Sanction Machine in the back of the bowling centre. He got it to market, where it gained more and more interest, which necessitated moving to a warehouse adjacent to the centre. In the end this got too small, so he took sixteen lanes out of his bowling centre - turning eight over to a production facility and the remaining eight into a training facility."

We talked a bit more about the training facility. "It's open to people that want to come and have lessons. It's not just about different lane conditions. We've employed Richard Shockley who's a world class coach that used to work with Team USA. Also, we have the CATS analysis system on two lanes, and two lanes of the ASTAR system". CATS is a ball trajectory analysis and ASTAR is a computer controlled video analysis which works from three sides, much like what golfers use to analyse their swing. "You can pretty much do everything with ASTAR, looking at all parts of your game from all angles in slo-mo and freeze-frame". What with CATS and ASTAR and the ability to put out any of the conditions they've laid out in the past, you can see why the Kegel Company training facility has attracted top class bowlers from around the world. A number of Scandinavians including Tomas Leandersson stopped there on the way back from the Summer's mega-buck events in Las Vegas this year.

We went on to talk about their lane machines and the lane conditioners. "Our marketing arm now is the Phoenix 'S', and the private sales are as the Sanction Machine II. All the machines are hand built in Sebring. We manufacturer and market three types of lane conditoner and one lane cleaner. There's Defense-S for the Sanction technology with the fluid metering pump, Phoenix-S and the Chairman. There's the Defense-W for wick machines like the Phoenix and Silver Bullet Magnum. And we have the Defense-HF for the single-speed machines like the Lanewalker, Excel and Century 100. We have complete quality control over these, our own products. This was one of the reasons for getting involved with oil, so for instance, when we're out on Tour and go from batch to batch we can be sure of things. We feel our oil is less temperature sensitive then some of our competitors, which makes a difference for transit and things like TV shows, where increased temperature results in lower viscosity and therefore oil that's more prone to move around". The Kegel Company are one of the few in our industry to gain ISO 9001 quality assurance registration.

Now on to 'The Foundation'. This organisation has members who are bowlers, coaches, pro-shop operators, bowling proprietors, bowler centre employees, lane maintenance personnel - anyone with an interest in restoring integrity to this great sport we love. JJ told me, "John Davis started The Foundation as a group of people with a common goal, to make bowling fair for all styles of players world-wide. It's kind of difficult with different conditions and styles, just to see who is the best. If you throw a javelin or run the 200 metres in the Olympics it's a lot easier to see the winner. But it'll always be a fact of life that some bowlers' style, roll, axis-tilt or whatever will match up to a given condition better than someone else. Nonetheless, we can try and bring about a situation where at any given league or tournament, fairness and predictable ball reaction are the rule, not the exception. We're trying to get those involved in the sport to work together. Everyone has a different idea on things. Some people like the new game, some don't, but we need to make it obvious who the better bowler is". I asked JJ about The Foundation's website (http://www.foundation300.com), and some of the detailed information it contains. He said, "We want people to see what we see laying out conditions. All the data we see can be made available to everyone, so people involved in bowling can be better informed and educated. We want to share what we know, so people can understand things like, why certain lanes play easier than others". We went on to talk about lane topography (what shape the surface is in) and how important it is to ball reaction. "We have a device that measures the crowns and depressions in the lane. A lot of times we've seen a correlation between why certain lanes may favour left or right handers, or why it may favour playing deeper inside or outside and the lane topography. When we go to a tournament we do random lane checks every five feet in nine different spots. In my experience, I've only ever seen a couple of lanes that have been completely legal (+/- 40,000'ths of an inch) over all forty-five spots. A lot of time when associations do this, they only check at two distances. Because we see so much more of the lane, we notice they are out of tolerance to some degree at one or more points". Is it just all measurements I asked? "No, we use our experience to watch things like ball reaction, and see if it matches up with our topography measurements. Sometimes we see an obvious effect, like depressions in the last five boards meaning no one's playing outside five because the ball's going straight in the gutter". What about the topography of wooden vs. synthetics? "Actually we've noticed synthetics can be worse, because often they're overlays (like Guardian) that will tend to take the shape of the surface they're covering. Often with wood, when it's resurfaced, the machine used is just about as level as you can get. Also the wood tends to be nailed in place and is more stable". It was really interesting talking to JJ about the Kegel Company and The Foundation. I thought as I wrote this, it was a far cry from the most recent tournament in England I attended where the lane machine blew up and after much ado, a Team England ranking event ended up being cancelled. By the way, if you're interested in joining The Foundation, you can get in touch with them at Foundation.com.The Kegel is at kegel.net.

INTERVIEW WITH BILL WASSERBERGER FROM BRUNSWICK

We caught up with one of the world's top ball designers, Brunswick's Bill Wasserberger at the second stop of the inaugural Swedish Super-Sixx Tour held during September in Gothenberg.

Bill and his colleague Billy Orlikowski are normally to be found in Muskegon, Michigan at Brunswick's HQ developing some of the weapons we get to choose from. What brings you to Scandinavia then, I asked him? "I'm here in Europe doing a series of seminars on some of the new things Brunswick are thinking about - just got in from one in England in fact".

What's your background with Brunswick? "I've been with them for fourteen years. The first four-five were in R&D on lane finishes, wood lane coatings, oils and cleaners. Since around 1990 and the Rhino Pro's I've been in ball design".

I've had a feeling for some time that the big manufacturers have orientated their ball design philosophy around the PBA and the Pros - how do you feel about this? "Up until around 1995 that's just about how we went at it. We designed balls that we thought would work well for our Pros out on Tour, and then we would just sell them on to the public. Toward the end of 1994 we designed a couple of balls that became the Black Amber Zone and the Red Zone, which were the first two Zone balls. They would have been good balls for the Tour at the end of 1994, because the lanes were rather dry and they were a medium reaction sought of ball.

But they changed the lane conditions on the Tour, such that they weren't any good for the tournaments at the start of 1995.

To make matters worse, we felt they were too weak for the [U.S] domestic market. So from then we switched into a design mode where what most people think of as Brunswick balls are really designed for the consumer.

So when the Pros need something different from that - normally a little milder coverstock or less flare, we release our 'Tour Editions', and they don't get distributed really widely. We feel now things need to segment even further - the requirements of the international market are becoming enough different to warrant this. The balls we've released recently for the [U.S.] domestic market have been too strong for the domestic markets in Asia and Europe. So now we're looking at designing in three areas: Pros, domestic U.S. and overseas."

By having subtlety different 'Tour Editions' [sometimes denoted just by a different coloured pin] is there a danger that you could mis-represent the reaction of a given ball, if a domestic customer sees how it reacts on a PBA telecast and assumes he/she will get the same performance? "We would always tend to think that domestic customers in the 200-250 RPM rev range, as opposed to the Pros at anything up to 300-400 RPM would be better off with the domestic version of the product. All our research shows the front line retailer is the number one influence over ball purchases. Obviously good education from the Pro-Shop operators is important here, and one of the things we're doing to enhance this is introducing Pro Source". For those of you who do not know about Pro Source, Brunswick has designed a Pro Shop Alliance that will allow easy access to the tools and information they need to keep up to date on all the latest bowling and Brunswick have to offer. Through the Internet each Pro Source member is allowed access to a 'members only' web site that offers detailed information on product and technical information.

It's seemed in recent years that new ball after new ball has been like 'who's hook rating is now the highest' and 'I just see people buying hook in a box'. Have we, or are we, getting to a limit on this sort of thing? "I think the pro-active balls we've brought out recently with the ETX coverstocks like the Zone Pro Teal and Zone Pro Azure are so aggressive we've really run up against a wall. We're looking now to 'shape' the ball reaction more. We're looking to fine tune the years' old concept of 'skid/roll/hook' [or is it skid/hook/roll?] - where the ball's pretty clean through the front, you get a little arcing in the mid-part of the lane and finally, a strong back-end reaction. If you start deviating from that significantly, usually things don't go so good - things like going way too long through the break point, or reacting too soon. If you look at what we've got now in our range - with four different flavours of pro-active combined with reactive, we really take a bowler from a very even arc to a very skid-snap reaction. So if you want to pull the break point in or push it down the lane, you can move up and down that ladder. That's how pro-active and reactive compliment one another to create different kinds of break point".

Listening to Bill made me think about some of the things he was saying. Subtle things like 'moving the break-point around'. I was always under the impression that you bowled on what the lanes gave you and adjusted your game/equipment to the break point. But more and more with the Pros, their concept of playing the lanes is completely different from amateurs. Most amateurs play the reaction (what the lane gives them), whereas the Pros create their reaction. The Pros have a tendency to play where they feel most comfortable and drill equipment that allows them to play there. So it's not just the debate about oil patterns being different between the Tour and, say, the ABC tournaments, it's the different type of transition that the lanes go through when the Pros bowl on an area they've forced themselves onto - not necessarily the transition the lanesman envisaged.

What about the feeling people have had about Brunswick being a 'low RG' company and some of your main competitors being a 'high RG' company? "You know we have brought out some high RG balls. We made the high RG ball that the ABC measures everything else by - you can't go much higher than that one. We bought out the Quantum Midnight Blue and the Danger Zone Tour Edition 1, where the RG was higher than three-piece balls. But recently we've tended to work with low to medium designs because we feel with balls where the RG is truly high, they tend to hang in the out-of-bounds a little and don't recover so well to the pocket. Whereas the high RG balls would be suited to a drier or shorter pattern, the longer oil patterns used out on Tour now tend to make them hang on the outside a little. Generally we find that the guys that are really firm with their speed, like Parker Bohn, tend to migrate toward the low RG stuff, and the guys that are a little more mid-range like Randy Petersen or Johnny Petraglia tend to migrate toward the moderately high RG stuff. Also, going back to what we were saying about the domestic markets, the lower RG balls tend to suit the lower rev bowlers".

RG = 'Radius of Gyration'. Simply put, a 'low RG' ball will have its mass concentrated toward the ball's centre, so will tend to 'roll earlier' than a 'high RG' ball where the mass is more toward the outside, and so the ball will 'lope' further down the lane. A good analogy is an ice skater performing a spin. As he/she moves their arms in toward their body (concentrating their mass), they will spin faster; conversely, moving their arms further out, will mean they spin slower.

I do have some reservations about Bill's philosophy here, and have to say that some of the best amateurs I've talked to recently say that it's very difficult to throw low-RG stuff if you like hooking the ball. Those that favour playing in tend to go for Columbia or Storm.

What's the thinking in the 'signature' range of balls - the MVP range? "Well it's two things really. Firstly we have a stable of great pro staff; some guys with magnificent careers, and we felt their names could be used to sell balls. The other thing is that we worked with these guys to give them some reactions they particularly liked. Johnny Petraglia's a senior now, but he grew up more in the plastic Dick Weber era, so he's always favoured a more even reaction - so with the LT48, we'd have a reactive type skid-snap coverstock, but combined with a low-RG core, so it's a little more even. Parker Bohn really like the Sapphire Zone, so we married a Sapphire Zone weight block with a new reactive shell, thus his ball's a little tamer and smoother down the lane. Mike Alby actually picked a core and cover he'd like us to work with, and we ended up with something based on the Defense Zone". How's the range done in terms of sales? "Better than expected. I think we've managed to bring back a few classic ball reactions into the product line that people were starting to miss a little - I really think we needed to do that". Is this a trend that's going to continue? "Well yeah, I think we'll continue". What will the Chris Barnes MVP look like - a ball with a motor inside it!!? "Well, we'll bring back the purple Rhino Pro with an updated cover - he does rather stomp on it doesn't he…!!".

I've heard people here in England express some confusion over how to prepare the surface of these new pro-active balls. What's the word from the expert's mouth? "Well, we're just about to introduce a new material for sanding and polishing called Trizact. It's a series of four different abrasives we got from 3M, where it was originally designed to polish glass and imitation marble, and with these, we can take pro-actives from dull to shiny". Is there still some mis-conceptions about how pro-actives react when their surface is changed? "Yeah, maybe. When we first came out with pro-actives, we told people that if you shined them, they would tend to react more like urethane, i.e. they'd go longer, wouldn't finish as strong and hook less. As opposed to reactives where when you shine them they will generally go longer through the oil and snap harder. But with the Trizact system, you can now make the pro-actives behave more like a reactive when polished. What's the Trizact system consist of? "The best way to describe the abrasives is that the pads are flower-petal shaped, which then fit onto a special hand-tool (which looks like a big grapefruit cut in half) that can be used with a spinner".

I concluded things with Bill by talking a little about Brunswick's Throbot (which is an R&D robot ball thrower). "We have it set up with 24 SuperCATS sensors (CATS is a ball trajectory and velocity system) and use it primarily to test new cover/core configurations. So when we have a new test ball, we go back and forth between the test ball and a control ball looking at the differences". Do you use it to throw other people's equipment? "Yeah, we do some competitive analysis; but what it's really good for is getting a quick read on something new. Consistency is the key - it's around 3 or 4 times more consistent than a good human bowler through the heads. The Throbot error margin through the first SuperCATS sensor is around 3-4 tenths of an inch, whereas a good human would be 1-1½ inches. The rotation rate and axis at release is completely consistent. The velocity consistency is +/- 10%. Does the consistency present any problems? "Funnily enough yes - the lane will break-down differently because of the accuracy compared with 'normal' play". And are there things it's not too good at? "Well, when a human gets lined-up and the lane breaks down, he/she has the ability to move accordingly - it's difficult to get Throbot to do that". Going back to a point in last month's interview where you were talking about the three-pronged marketing strategy (Pros, [U.S] domestic and international), which area do you see Throbot being most useful? "The thing is with the Pro Staff, they're pretty consistent anyway, so although we can dial in their releases to the Throbot, I think it's the domestic and international markets where we're looking for it to benefit us in the future. In the past when we've worked with human bowlers of that sort of standard, we'd drill up eight balls and get them to bowl for half-a-day or more - but after a while, we'd have problems with things like getting them to repeat shots. With Throbot we can set it up for that sort of physical game, but get the consistency we need for comparative testing."

TOURNAMENT REPORT FROM SWEDEN

The third stop of the inaugural Swedish Super-Sixxx (SSST) Tour embraced the twentieth annual AIK Tournament. This was held in Stockholm the first week of the new millennium.

Team Sweden's Raymond Jansson took an opportunity to practice for his entry onto the world tobogganing stage by practising at home with his young son. Unfortunately, things didn't go to plan, and he came off his sled and ending up fracturing his knee. This removed one of Team Sweden's longstanding members from this formidable Scandinavian field that included all the other five male members that have not long returned from a successful WTBA-FIQ World Championships: Tomas Leandersson, Patrik Backe, Goran Carlsson, Martin Blixt and Johan Damberg. Also there was All-Events champion Tore Torgersen from Norway, along with Norway's Kim Asbjorn-Haugen. Furthermore the field had a couple of raves from the grave: former PBA member Mats Karlsson and ex-Team Sweden coach Goran Baggendorf. No Fins, but the impending Helsinki Ballmasters would no doubt see them there in force. The rest of the field were Swedish and included the past winner from the last two years, the young left-hander, Jerker Fahlström. The joker in the Swedish pack was Kjell Isaksson, past world record holder at two heights in the pole vault. Unfortunately, Kjell's lack of ball speed would mean he wouldn't 'spring' into the quarter-finals.

For the first time in Sweden, the Government lottery was covering the tournament, so there was great interest in the crowd and from yours truly. You could wait till nearly the end of qualification before committing a bet, so the smart money was put on really late after some of the available players had been eliminated.

The bowling centre, the second largest in Sweden, is situated south of the city on a small trading estate. I found out this estate supplies the retailers in Stockholm with fruit, veg and flowers; so this went some way to explain why the food in the bowling centre, and the bouquets received by the winners were such good quality. The actual bowling hall was on the second floor of a building it shared with a cash-and-carry, but there was no lift, so fitness in the competitors was paramount just to get their equipment onto the lanes. The centre was split 14/15 AMF wood lanes opposite one another, with Brunswick A2 pinspotters at the sharp end. Although the equipment was quite old, I didn't see ONE stop in five days of competition. The only thing to slow the bowlers down was the occasionally dead wood caused by the lightweight Vultex pins and late rakes. I caught up with the centre manager, Hans Fridell for a chat. He told me, "I've worked here since1971. And 3 years ago I started running the place". What about being out-of-town and off the beaten track, does that affect your custom? "We have good regular business, and the open play revenue is the best in fifteen years. So we have been able to invest in the centre and make it a nice place for people to come to with good facilities. Also I advertise heavily in the Stockholm press which pays dividends".

The two guys apart from Hans and his crew who were responsible for the smooth running of things were the tournament director, Ingvar Gustavsson, and Peter Ramen who was responsible for the fast turnaround of scores from the computers. This was the twentieth running of the tournament, and Ingvar has been involved in all of them. I noticed the 'AIK' name crops up in a number of different Stockholm teams, probably most easily recognised is the AIK Stockholm soccer team. Ingvar told me, "AIK means All Sporting Club, so we have a number of sports in Stockholm all under the same banner; things like soccer, bowling, handball and ice hockey, to name a few". When was AIK born? He said, "AIK was founded in 1891; but we believe the bowling team is the oldest in the world. Our club chairman has recently uncovered some documents in the local library dating the club back to the 1900's. We've applied to register with the Guinness Book of Records now". This was the same proud club tradition I was first introduced to last year at the Les Lion Cup. The Swedes seem very strong on their clubs, and a lot of their league play is based on inter-club weekends, travelling to one another's centres.

Again the SSST had the excellent service of the Kegel Company from Sebring, Florida in the guise of lanesman Steve Cross. Steve told me he was laying out the same pattern as seen recently at the WTBA-FIQ World Championships. If you've read the interview with John Janawicz from the Kegel Company on page n, you will see that the lane topography is an important factor when the Kegel Company get involved in lane maintenance. Steve told me, "The lanes here are the best I've seen in a long while". I asked him if the two sides of the house where playing differently in his opinion. He told me, "Yes, I think the high end (15-28 & 0) are playing tighter than the low end (1-14)". I was curious if the lane topography measurements would reflect end-to-end evenness as well as side-to-side. He said, "We need a laser to do that. We do have a machine back at base in Sebring, but we've yet to figure out a way of making it portable - but we're working on it!!". Like in the WTBA-FIQ World Championships, lane verification took place on every strip and dress of every lane. This involved an independent person 'walking' alongside the machine, watching the pattern go down and finally signing off a verification sheet. It's really cool to watch the Kegel machines oil, because they sit an ultra-violet light on top of the machine which allows the UV additive in the conditioner to be monitored from the fluid-pump, through the hoses and onto the roller. Steve told me, "This fluid pump we use is the same sought of pump they use in hospitals for automatic IV infusions; it's the most accurate way of dispensing the oil, and we can measure very accurately how much conditioner we are laying down".

We had a successful 'sweeper' evening on Tuesday night (sweeper - normally two game scratch tournament outwith the main tournament), which paid out around £600. The guy that won it was the organiser of the up and coming SSST stop five, Jorgen Lundin. I asked him what he thought of the brackets and the sweepers, he said, "They're great - we're definitely going to have them at our tour stop!!". Jorgen was so chuffed he asked me to print off the sweeper and bracket listings so he could show his son how well he had done. Again, that's great for the sport, you could see in his face he was dead pleased, and this sweeper field included half-a-dozen Team Sweden adult and U23 players - well done Jorgen!!

Instead of the 'Desperado' last ditch squad first rolled-out at the last SSST stop, they turned it upside down into a series of 'early-bird' squads before Christmas. The 'early birds' were guaranteed ten spots in the top forty for the first cut. Leading the 'early birds' was my good English friend turned Swedish citizen, Stefan Dew. Leading the main bank of qualifiers after ten games was Mikael Roos. Then the cut to forty; pins go away and bowl another eight. Missing out one place outside the top twelve for match play was Torgersen. The top twelve included Leandersson, Damberg and Blixt. One lady survived: Catharina Blixt-Jeppsson.

Blixt got the nearest to TV in fifth place, Damberg ended up eigth, and Leandersson surprisingly, never got going and ended up languishing in tenth place. The top four for TV were: Fahlström, Mikael Roos, Roger Öberg and Jan Nordberg.

Match one was a scrappy affair: Öberg looked like taking it, but shot himself between the eyes by missing a single 3-pin in the ninth and leaving a 3-7 split in the tenth - Nordberg stole it. Match two and Roos' form that had left him top qualifier after ten games deserted him in this shoot-out. Championship match saw two-time AIK back-to-back winner Fahlström never get into gear, and when Nordberg strung loads of strikes together mid-game, Fahlström's hopes of a late Christmas turkey had scuttled away to the Animal Protection League. I asked Nordberg how he felt, he said, "I feel good, fantastic. It was my first time on TV, and I was very nervous to start with because I was so unused to the situation. But after the first game I settled down and it was easier to play". I asked him what he was going to do with the money, in the bank maybe? He told me, "No, I will probably buy a bigger motorcycle!!".

This meant one of the 'outsiders' won the tournament as far as the Government's lottery was concerned. Odds were set at 4/1 bar. I wasn't as fortunate as Håkan Fredriksson (tournament manager of the last SSST stop) who smartly covered the bar bet; and I know one or two other bowlers who did the same. It just goes to prove when you've got the whole of Team Sweden's male WTBA-FIQ World Championship team together, it can happen that not one of them makes the TV show. The TV show for this stop was a first, a live telecast; so emotions were high and nerves pretty jagged for a lot of people. Well known English TV producer Phil Mison has been employed by the SSST to produce all the telecasts; and he had the air of cool authority as he handled this one really well. A number of pre-recorded interviews were prepared with the medal winners from the WTBA-FIQ World Championships, that he 'dropped' into the live show, as and when. Also I noticed that the successes of the team were announced to the crowd, who warmly received them with rapturous applause; something that was sadly missing at the Airport PTBC, post Team England's return.

Swedish Super-Sixxx 1999 Stop Three - AIK 2000 International Tournament

Malarhallen Bowl-O-Rama, Stockholm, Sweden - December 18th 1999 - January 6th 2000

1. Jan Nordberg (Sweden) 633 (3 Game) £5,000

2. Jerker Fahlström (Sweden) 182 (1 Game) £1,200

3. Mikael Roos (Sweden) 178 (1 Game) £750

4. Roger Öberg (Sweden) 157 (1 Game) £600

Stepladder: Nordberg defeated Öberg 170-157, Nordberg defeated Roos 218-178; Final: Nordberg defeated Fahlström 245-182.