Review of my PBA Experience League, in St. Louis MO, at Sunset Lanes. the most fun I’ve had Sport Bowling

Sunset Lanes on Watson Road in St. Louis hosted a PBA Experience Sport Bowling League this summer, 2007. It was a great league.

Sunset really put a lot of effort into doing well with the PBA Experience League. For example, every Sunday and Monday during the league, Sunset set aside 4 lanes and laid out that week’s PBA Experience oil pattern, for practice. Plus, summer rates were only $0.75 per line.

The 5 PBA oil patterns differ pretty much from each other. You can tell that you are on a different pattern from last week’s. The Cheetah is all backend, while the Shark is long and relatively oily, and the Chameleon, Viper and Scorpion are various grades of in-between, but each having a different length and different placement and quantity of oil — 5 really different patterns.

Several years earlier I bowled in a “Sport League” in St. Louis at another house. It was an unfun experience. Allegedly, the house was putting out 4 different so-called “Sport Patterns”. Well, I couldn’t tell the difference between them — every damn one of them was the same —– Very Long, Very Heavy Oil. My ball always came back heavily tracked with oil, no matter where I threw it, on all the patterns. There wasn’t more than 5 feet of backend on any of the 4 patterns, it seemed to me. It was a miserable experience.

Based on that earlier terrible sport experience, I had a bad opinion of Sport Leagues. Then I read about the PBA Experience, and I wished my home house offered it. The PBA Patterns seemed to be real distinct patterns, and not just floods of long oil.

So when Sunset Lanes announced at the last minute that they were going to run a PBA league this past summer, I jumped on it. And I’m glad I did. I’ll be a repeat customer next summer.

By the way, Sunset might run a Fall PBA Experience League. The manager said he’s thinking about a first and third Saturday afternoon PBA league.