In the world of college bowling, challenge is everything. In order to challenge some of the most skilled bowlers in the country, difficult shot patterns are necessary. One may ask, "What constitutes as a difficult oil pattern?" The answer is a sport shot.
If any person walked into a bowling alley to open bowl, he or she would bowl on a lane that had a House Shot (THS). On THS (the block or christmas tree diagrams above), there is a heavy amount of oil located in the center of the lane. As the lane expands out to the gutter, there is less and less oil. This allows a bowler to have a wide margin of error in hitting their mark. For instance, if a bowler's mark was the 10th board, he or she could most likely miss 5 boards left or right and still strike. When the ball is pulled to the left of the mark, the heavy oil allows the ball to continue skidding and not hook (friction cannot be created). When the ball misses the target to the right, the ball hooks back to the pocket (the 1-2 pins for left-handers and the 1-3 pins for right-handers) more sharply because it comes into contact with the dry (friction occurs sooner). Therefore, the purpose of THS is to allow bowlers to score very highly. Bowling centers want bowlers to have high scores so that they will be happy and continue bowling; it makes sense.
On a sport shot (the flat oil and reverse block are examples), however, that margin of error is eliminated to almost nothing. The oil in a sport shot is strategically placed to force bowlers to hit their market. Whereas on THS a bowler usually has 10 boards of error, a bowler on a sport shot might only have one board for error. Speed is also critical on a sport shot because if a ball is thrown too fast or too slow, it could cause the ball to not hit the breakpoint accurately; this will cause ugly splits and tough spares. A good reference for THS vs. Sport Shots can be found here.
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