Blog - Bowling Education

USBC ARTICLE ARLINGTON, Texas - The United States Bowling Congress and Storm Products have agreed on a national tournament exclusion rule and ball exchange program for six Storm Products manufactured ball models. The agreement comes after USBC identified the models having a percentage of balls produced below USBC minimum 73D hardness specification.USBC's investigation showed a percentage of these ball models measured below the USBC-required hardness level of the approval samples submitted by Storm. Storm collaborated with USBC after being notified of this testing.The affected models include: Storm Phaze 4 Storm Electrify Solid Storm Trend 2 900 Global Altered Reality 900 Global...

By Dustin Zehner On March 14th, 2022, USBC revoked the approval of the Storm Spectre Bowling Ball. The approval was revoked because the hardness on their test balls fell below 73D on the Shore D Hardness Scale which is the spec for hardness put in place by the USBC. You can read their findings here. For more information on bowling ball hardness, click here. A week later on March 21st 2022, Storm announced the resolution for customers that purchased a Spectre. They are offering their customers that purchased a Spectre and have it drilled, a $50 drilling credit to their...

With all that is currently going on surrounding bowling ball hardness, Creating the Difference decided to run some tests in an effort to help explain some things about hardness and help the bowling community have a better understanding of this topic. Though not an exhaustive study, we wanted to collect some information and see if we could understand more about this topic.  With the help of Mikey Pinel, we sought to answer some of the following questions:   Does changing the hardness of a ball have a direct impact on both footprint and/or performance?  Is there a way to tie hardness...

ARLINGTON, Texas - The United States Bowling Congress has revoked approval of the Storm Spectre bowling ball and removed it from the list of balls approved for USBC competition effective March 14, 2022. The revocation comes after USBC determined through its spot-checking procedures that a significant percentage of the balls produced do not comply with specifications and requirements outlined in the USBC Equipment Specifications and Certifications Manual.USBC testing showed a significant percentage of the Storm Spectre do not meet the minimum 73D hardness specification during spot checks of bowling balls in the field. The ball originally was approved based on samples...

  USBC UPDATES NATIONAL TOURNAMENT RULES IN RELATION TO PURPLE HAMMER ARLINGTON, Texas - The United States Bowling Congress is aware of a claim that a portion of the Purple Hammer bowling balls manufactured at the Ebonite International plant in 2016 and 2017 may have been produced below USBC's minimum 72D hardness specification. The Hammer brand was purchased by Brunswick Bowling Products in 2019, and the Ebonite plant subsequently closed.USBC conducted an investigation, interviewing more than a dozen individuals, including former Ebonite employees, in an attempt to validate the claim. Brunswick fully cooperated with the investigation.USBC has confirmed a production...