“One Man’s Amazing Journey to the Center of the Bowling Ball: Mo Pinel Spent a Career Reshaping the Ball’s Inner Core to Harness the Power of Physics. He Revolutionized the Sport—And Spared No Critics along the Way”, 2021-05-27 (; backlinks):
When Pinel looked into the discourse around ball performance, he found that most everyone believed that all that mattered was the quality of coverstock—that is, the exterior layer of a ball that is visible to the naked eye. Coverstocks are studded with microscopic spikes, the roughness of which is measured by the average distance from each spike’s peak to valley—a metric known as Ra. The higher a ball’s Ra, the more friction it can create with the lane and thus the greater the potential that it will hook well under the right circumstances. The hardness of the material that underlies the spikes is also an important factor. In the early 1970s, several pros had enjoyed great success by soaking their balls in methyl ethyl ketone, a flammable solvent that softened the coverstocks. (The balls became so gelatinous, in fact, that a bowler could indent the surface with a fingernail.) These softer balls gripped the lane much better than their harder counterparts, and so they tended not to skid unpredictably when encountering patches of oil used to dress the wooden boards. The use of methyl ethyl ketone had increased scores so much that rules were put in place mandating a degree of coverstock hardness as measured by a device known as a Shore durometer.
Pinel thought that too much attention was being paid to coverstocks and not nearly enough to what was inside the ball…Pinel used the shop’s drill and off-the-shelf components to alter balls. He’d pock them with deep holes that he’d then fill with dense wads of barium, a soft metal. “So I’d drill a hole, fill it with either dense or light stuff, and plug it to the top”, he says. “And I started playing around with that, and I started to see some differences in motion.”
Never lacking confidence, Pinel contacted several ball manufacturers in 1973 and proposed a deal: If they would sign a nondisclosure agreement, he’d brief them on his experimental results and help them design balls that would allow amateurs and pros alike to increase their strike rates. Company executives responded that they were willing to listen to Pinel’s ideas, but he was the one who would have to sign a release affirming that nothing he said was confidential. Miffed by what he saw as attempts to steal his ideas, Pinel veered away from a career in ball design.
…The AMF Sumo, the smash-hit ball that would earn Pinel his kanji pendant, was released in 1992. This time, Pinel opted for a core that bears a passing resemblance to the video game character Q✱Bert, albeit with a disc at the base in lieu of feet. The ball came out right as new regulations called for more oil to be poured on lanes, a change that decreased friction; this sapped shots of spin and power. The extra oil was no match for the Sumo, however, because Pinel’s core caused it to slice hard across the boards near the pins. The ball would eventually sell well enough to make Pinel a modestly wealthy man…Pinel says the size of his royalty eventually became a problem for AMF, and the company terminated his contract in 1995. He was barely out of work a week before he was hired by Faball…The ball that contained this revamped core, the Hammer 3D Offset, would become Pinel’s signature achievement. “That ball sold like hotcakes for 3 years, where the average life span of a ball was about 6 months”, says Del Warren, a former ball designer who now works as a coach in Florida. “They literally couldn’t build enough of them.” In addition to flaring like few other balls on the market, the 3D Offset was idiot-proof: The core was designed in such a way that it would be hard for a pro shop to muck up its action by drilling a customer’s finger holes incorrectly, an innovation that made bowlers less nervous about plunking down $432.58$2001996 for a ball…Pinel was delighted by the 3D Offset’s success not just because it affirmed his beliefs about the importance of asymmetry but also because it inflicted pain on his former employer. “AMF had been doing $25.95$121996 million a year; Hammer had been doing $2.16$11996 million”, he told me. “When we came out with the 3D Offset, Hammer did $25.95$121996 million a year and AMF did $2.16$11996 million. Not that I enjoyed that at all.” AMF would file for bankruptcy 4 years later.
…Pinel was still trying to maximize flare potential in his designs, an effort that was arguably becoming outmoded. A new generation of pro bowlers, both stronger and more technically sophisticated than their predecessors, have achieved unprecedented amounts of spin on their balls—sometimes as much as 600 revolutions per minute for those who opt for the increasingly popular 2-handed throwing technique. Such bowlers don’t need as much hook assistance as in days gone by, so they’re using more stable balls—a strategic trend that may be having a trickle-down effect on the league bowlers who worship the sport’s stars. In our conversations, Pinel never displayed any hint that he was worried about the future of his cores.