Today's bowler must learn about bowling oil patterns if they want to increase their level of competitiveness. Bowling oil patterns have become a fact of life in this sport and if you have not paid much attention to them, get prepared.

In times past, the prevailing thought was that, "the only purpose for oil is to protect the lane." With wood lanes, that was a good theory since oil would be absorbed into the boards as it was placed on the lane. There were really no bowling oil patterns and maintenance men who dressed the lanes used spray cans to apply the oil and then dragged a mop-like device up-and-down the lane to spread the oil evenly. The oil was generally sprayed from the foul line through the end of the pin deck with how much oil being applied left entirely up to the maintenance guy. The only variance in the bowling oil pattern was which direction the man dragged the broom - from the pin deck to the foul line, or vice-versa.

With the coming of automated lane dressers/conditioners, synthetic lanes, and high tech bowling balls, the era of differing bowling oil patterns is becoming more and more fine-tuned. At first, these machines were separate units, but they evolved into computer controlled, all-in-one units. With the advent of synthetic lanes and the onslaught of high tech, reactive resin bowling balls, the necessity for oiling the lanes from the foul line to the pin decks decreased; but, the need for changing the bowling oiling patterns became more acute.

High scoring has become the norm and many purists believe that the challenges of bowling have gone away because the game is now "too easy." With the computer programmable lane conditioners, varying the bowling oil pattern is allowing bowling centers to adjust the challenge level for the bowler.

The American Bowling Congress and Women's International Bowling Congress, now collectively known as the United States Bowling Congress (USBC), began promoting what is called a "Sport League." This type of league bowls under a more difficult bowling oil pattern which forces the bowlers to make radical adjustments in their delivery in order to score high games. It is not uncommon to see a 200+ average bowler under "regular house conditions" struggle to average 170 in the Sport League. Differing bowling oil patterns make a bowler concentrate more and increase their accuracy in hitting their targets on the lane. They also make the bowler do a bit more studying if they want to keep their competitiveness at a higher than average level. Sports Leagues are gaining in popularity and more bowlers are beginning to participate in them.

Recently, the Professional Bowler's Association (PBA) began revealing their own bowling oil patterns and in January, 2007, in conjunction with the USBC, announced the "PBA Experience Sport League." The premise of the league is that each week, they bowl with the bowling oil pattern used by the PBA Tour the week before. This means that you watch the pros bowl on Sunday and during the coming week, you bowl under the same lane conditions in your league the coming week.

Both the original Sport League and the PBA Experience Sport League will gain more participation as bowlers realize that those types of leagues are more challenging. For a "competition junkie," a sport that's too easy will not keep their interest very long. With the USBC and the PBA promoting them, bowling oil patterns will continue to receive emphasis. As people come back to the sport of bowling, their participation in competitive events will surely increase. They will have to study and learn about bowling oil patterns and about how to adjust under varying conditions in order to rise above and beyond being just "an average bowler."