I just went down to Reno and had two balls fail inspection-one for finger weight and one for side weight. both were drilled at Paradise-buyers be ware

I had a ball fail also but did not blame it on the shop. I had a drilled at Secoma the day before leaving and Cory weighed it out and it was fine. Cory and I bowl together at nationals so imagine how he felt when we got to Reno a few days later it was over for finger weight I trust the pro shop operators around here more than the Reno officials. So please be careful on where you place blame.

Southpaw Out

Yea that ball was at 3/4 finger I swear! I am still shocked that they had to plug the xtra hole and redrill it to make it legal. My procedures for my team it to weight every ball going down to nationals at least a day or to before and make sure they are all 1/4 or more under the legal limit so we dont get questioned at nationals! I would advise everyone going to take their equipment to their proshop and have them weighed out before going to nationals.

The Doc

I usually try to make sure before I leave a proshop that my ball is 3/4 or less in any direction. Remember those guys at Nationals probably weigh a hundred balls an hour, so there are bound to be mishaps in the measuring and sometimes drilling......sometimes balls are mismarked when coming from the manufacturer. I've never had a problem, at least not since the urethane days.

I even remember working at Paradise when Herb was there and I weighed a ball 5 times and it came out at 3/4 to 7/8 of side everytime and the ABT guys had it over everytime (this was over 10 years ago, so not the same regime), but my point is, it's not always an exact science and there are going to be variables. I've never had a ball drilled by Keith (I think that is who is still at Paradise), but if he weighed them up, it could be as simple as his scale isn't sitting on a flat surface. I also don't know how much truth there is to this, but without naming names, there was a tournament director who thought the weights could change slightly as a result of the ball soaking up oil, which won't alwasy be done evenly across the shell.

Yeah, from a personal perspective, I have a few thoughts-

Very few shops have the means to purchase the type of scales they're using, outs are less exact, so as a result sometimes we get a legal number and they don't.

As far as their scales go, these guys get slammed and have to weigh hundreds of balls in a short time. If they don't pay close attention and their scales are in need of recalibration, then they can even be incorrect even with better scales.

No pro shop guy is ever going to let a ball out of their shop that they know is illegal. Your pro shop guys are human too. Not everything we do is gold.

Heck, I've even seen pro shop guys have balls that didn't pass inspection. I went through a line with DJ who had 2 that didn't in 2007. I have one that's directly on 1 oz of finger and they spend like 5 minutes weighing and reweighing that one.

Either way, static weights won't be an issue in a few years anyway, as the restrictions will likely soon be eliminated due to the USBC Ball Motion Study results. Static weights are never more than 5% of your ball reaction on any reactive with a weight block anyhoo. Plus as long as any hole is between 3 3/8" and around 4 1/2" from the pin its almost dynamically irrelevant anyhoo, so no worries mate!