Core vs Cover: What's More Important? | Andrew Anderson Bowling

Hi everybody, welcome back. Today we're going to be going over cores and covers: what they are, why they're so important, and what you need to know about them. We're going to start with covers. The cover of the bowling ball is arguably the most important part of it. Yes, the core is the engine of the ball, but the cover is what creates traction on the lane. So what you find is with these two bowling balls — we have the Subzero Forge and the Nuclear Forge — same exact engine inside, same exact core, two completely different ball motions. And the reason for that is the cover. What makes the ball motion different is the responsiveness of the cover, what type of surface you have on the cover. We use abralon pads all the time. When you go to the website, you see it'll say, 'Alright, this ball's finished with 2000' or 'this ball's finished with 4000,' right? That is part of the surface of the cover. The more surface you have — which would be a lower number, something like 500 grit — that grit would be something like the Subzero comes at. And then you have something shinier, that might be 4000 polished or 2000 polished. That'll be what the Nuclear comes at. The reason being, the shinier the bowling ball — the shinier that cover — the longer the ball is going to go down the lane. Naturally, the opposite can be said when we add more surface. If you add 500 or 2000 to a shiny bowling ball, you're going to make the ball hook earlier; it's going to happen earlier in the lane. The ball motion is going to happen closer to you. So when we talk about bowling balls, you talk to your pro shop operator: 'What type of ball do you need?' Speed-dominant players who like to throw the ball really hard generally need more surface bowling balls because they need the traction of the cover to pick up earlier. And then those who throw it slower or need more hook potential down the lane will generally be in a shinier, or higher surface, or lower surface cover bowling ball to get the ball farther down the lane naturally and retain more energy. The cover of the bowling ball is definitely by far the most important because you can do so much with the cover of the bowling ball. You can't change the core. What's inside is what's inside. That core wants to roll certain ways almost no matter how you drill it — but yes, the way you drill the ball, where the pin does matter — we'll get into that a little later. But the cover is most important because when you change the surface of it, you're changing the actual traction between that ball and the lane. I mean, if we get really nitty-gritty, I could technically make a plastic ball — if I hit it with enough surface — hook earlier than this Subzero Forge if it was shiny. And that's not because the core in it, or any of that, or the way it's drilled; that is simply because of the cover.

Now why does a core matter? The core matters so much because that is giving you: how much hook potential is this ball going to have? When you start talking to your pro shop operator about — when they bring up low performer or low-end performing bowling balls, or mid-level performing bowling balls, or high-performance bowling balls — they're really talking about the core strength because the cover is what you're getting out of the ball, right? You're getting a type of ball motion based on if it's shiny or dull, but the actual overall motion is dictated by the core and how much hook potential it will have because this Subzero does have way more hook potential than that plastic ball would be, even if they're at different surfaces. The core of the ball is really going to dictate how early the ball motion may be, how smooth it may be, depending on the numbers. So we can get nitty-gritty about, you know, RG's differentials. The higher the RG, simply the farther ball is going to want to go. The higher the differential — in this ball it's 0.055, very high — the higher that differential number, the more flare potential or hook potential the ball has. But again, none of that matters until the cover or surface is matched up for what you need. So that's why we have two of the exact same core here and completely different covers. Because of the shiny, more responsive cover on the Nuclear Forge, we're getting a longer, more responsive ball motion — more than the Subzero which has a slower response, slower cover, which makes the ball roll earlier and smoother. So specifically, this would be better for a speed-dominant player; this would be better for a rev-dominant player.

All in all, I've given you a ton of information right. What do I — how do I use this information? What am I looking for? When you're looking to get a new bowling ball, you have to look at a few different features of the bowling ball: how strong is that core? Is this a mid-level ball? Is this a high-performance ball? Low-end ball? What type of cover does it have? Something surface, something shiny? Is it strong? Watch reviews, watch ball videos. But when you go to your pro shop operator who knows these bowling balls because they see them day in and day out, you've got to ask the questions like, 'Hey, I'm looking for something that's earlier and smoother than X ball,' and they'll be able to give you suggestions based on the ball you have. Because if I go in with a Subzero, this is a very slow ball right? So if I ask for something even slower than this, they're going to say, 'Hey, we need something very high-performance, very high-end, something with a bigger engine, something with a bigger cover than that to make it slower than that ball motion.' But then if I went in to say, 'Hey, I need something a little slower than my Nuclear Forge,' you're going to have more options because this is such a shiny ball. There's a lot of bowling balls that are slower-type motion than this ball. So that's where you have to ask the right questions to your pro shop operator for what you're looking for, to make it easier for them and make it easier for you to get the ball that you need.

Alright, so to start this, I have brought the surface up on my Subzero Forge to 4000. And honestly, it kind of looks shiny. So what you should realize is 4000 is not a lot of surface. So for me, this would be considered a pretty shiny ball. I'm going to throw it. I'm on a fresh 40-foot, 7:1 pattern. 7:1 ratio. So what that means is it's not a house shot, not super difficult. It would be something in the middle of the road type of category. Okay, and so we're going to just throw a few.

What my goal is with this video is to show you that yes, this ball can strike at this surface and look pretty good, but it might be able to look better with a surface change, and we'll find out why as we go. So I'm going to move a little left off of that shot. And you found that it did strike, but to some they would view that as, 'Wow, my ball didn't hook enough down the lane.' But what really happened is the ball went too far down the lane before it did try to hook. Want to throw a couple more. Maybe one more. And there it is. So we had a ball — I did miss right, obviously, right. I clearly missed right there. But I only missed by two and a half boards based on Specto. Down the lane to the right, and my ball went from striking to missing the headpin. So what we're going to do now is I'm going to hit my bowling ball with some surface. I'm probably only going to start with about 2000, and we're going to see what kind of changes that makes to the bowling ball itself and the motion. Try to make sure you get the whole bowling ball.

Alright, so now we have a 2000 grit Subzero Forge, yes done by hand but plenty productive. So we're going to keep trying to throw some shots over there to the right. And so that wasn't nearly as far right. That was actually probably one of my better shots, right? And it still went through the pins awesome. It did not look like the surface change did a whole lot to it, right? But now if I can throw one to the right, we'll see what that surface change actually did. And so what we learned there is: a little surface — yes, a couple shots before that when the ball was shiny, my ball did strike a couple times, but my ball was going way too far down the lane to give me good ball motion. And so just by hitting with 2000, that one shot that I missed to the right that missed the head pin went from missing the head pin to going through the pins pretty well. So super encouraging when you hit a bowling ball with surface and it continues to make a lot of shape.

One of the biggest misconceptions that we have when we see a bowling ball with a ton of surface is that that's going to hook way too early, it's going to burn up, it's going to roll out. But what we realize is a lot of the time, the ball's probably actually going way too far down the lane when it's shiny. So you see what a little bit of surface does. Now I'm going to really hammer the ball. Okay, I'm going to hit it with a ton of surface. I'm probably going to hit it with like 500, and we'll see what that does to the ball motion. Feels like somebody's ringing on a chalkboard when you're doing this sometimes.

Alright, so now we have a very surface bowling ball, we have something 500 — which would be considered a lot of surface. So I'm going to play it in the same part. What I do expect to happen is the ball is going to react even earlier, it's going to get even smoother. It may go through the pins, it may not, 'cause I do feel like this is probably a touch too much surface for what I'm bowling on. That could not have been more perfect for what we're working on here because that was a very good shot. It was in the oil just like the other one. And so the difference between a shiny ball, a surface ball 2000, and a 500 grit ball is: what the shiny one went too far down the lane, kind of trickled them out, made a bucket right? The 2000 grit one went through the pins awesome, chopped the 10 out. The 500 grit ball hooked in a very good spot, was way too smooth, and so it didn't have enough energy to continue through the pins.

What have we learned from this? That surface changes are super necessary. You have one bowling ball, and as you can see, I had one bowling ball that shaped three completely different ways. When it was shiny — a little too far down the lane, it tried to have a lot of angle but it only looked good when I kept it in the oil. I hit it with 2000, when I kept it in the oil it looked good, and when I threw it to the right it looked good. And then I have the 500 grit bowling ball that I threw a really good shot in the middle and it just burned up — it was too much surface. So when you're thinking about getting a new bowling ball, sometimes it could be as simple as just making a surface change of something you've got.

So 500 grit bowling ball — we can still get it through the pins. I had to rotate it a little more. A couple things to note: this core in this bowling ball is very big, it is a very rolly core right? So when I hit it with a ton of surface, I'm expecting it to roll faster even more so than something with a smaller core, something in our Max Throw line right? And that's because the actual potential of the bowling ball hooking gets amplified when you hit a ball with a big core with surface. So simply, the stronger the ball, the more surface, the more possibility there is for it to burn up energy and actually be too smooth. But if you have something like a Maxxed, something like a Venom Shock, a Black Venom, that you're hitting with that much surface, you can still expect it to retain a lot of energy because that core is not amplified by the amount of surface on the cover. I hope this makes sense to you guys. Please in the comments write some notes back, I'll try to get to it in a future video. I hope you've enjoyed this, thanks for watching. Thanks for watching. If you like what you see, make sure you subscribe and turn on notifications so you never miss a video.