The Match Pearl
Review Date: 11 October 2016
Reviewed by:
Storm/Roto Grip staffer John Brockland
Style: Stroker Rev Rate: 280-310
PAP: 5.5" over and 1" up
Not every ball is for
every bowler.
That doesn’t mean it’s a bad ball.
It’s just the reality from one person’s game to
the next.
The MATCH SOLID is a ball I have never matched up with
well despite a number of different efforts at tweaking
things with it – surface changes, adding a weight hole,
etc. But one
should never right off an entire series of balls simply
because one in the series doesn’t work for you.
The MATCH PEARL has proven that for me.
It’s built on the same
Stinger Core with the same tech specs as the MATCH
SOLID. But
the pearl cover (Reactor Pearl) makes all the difference
for me in performance.
I would not have been inclined to try the MATCH PEARL except
for the fact that I saw Hall of Fame down-and-in player, Liz
Johnson, using it effectively during qualifying from around
15-board on the very tricky US Women’s Open pattern this
year. And, I
remembered seeing another great down-and-in player, Michael
Haugen Jr., using it effectively on the left lane in his
impressive win at the PBA XtraFrame Gene Carter’s Pro Shop
Classic while using a Storm LOCK on the right lane.
That was contested on the 41-foot PBA World
Championship pattern.
If the ball performed so well for them, I thought it
might be beneficial to my old-man game.
Not bowling many tournaments right now, I can only speak to
what it’s done for me on hooking STL house patterns.
Overall, that's been very good!
It generally allows me to tackle even STL’s
friction-heavy track areas with some measure of a tube-style
approach to lane play – which, of course, for an old guy
like me always translates into better scores than having to
play deep inside.
Obviously it can be effective in the right situations
on at least medium volume as well – just as Michael Haugen,
Jr. demonstrated when using it to keep the ball on line on
the left lane in the tournament mentioned above while doing
the same thing on the right lane with the much, much
stronger Storm LOCK.
 
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