Am I Bowling On The USBC Red Lane Oil Pattern In My League?

If you ask am I bowling on the USBC Red lane oil pattern in my league, the answer is most likely “Yes!”

While all three patterns (Red, White and Blue) are “house” shots and are widely used in most centers across America, they provide a variable range of difficulty.

USBC Red pattern is designed to provide the greatest amount of forgiveness of all three patterns.

The Red pattern is the typical of conditions found in the majority of bowling centers today.

Of the three patterns, the Red pattern will yield the highest scoring pace for a typical USBC member.

With a much higher concentration of oil in the middle of the lane, the Red pattern allows bowlers to find more oil inside of target and more dry boards outside of target, often resulting in pocket strikes when the bowler misses the intended target line.

This typical “house pattern” is the least challenging of the three.
With good alignment, you can bowl high scores by hitting the pocket frequently, thus increasing your chances at getting strikes compared to missing the pocket a like number of times.

The forgiveness the Red pattern provides allows for you to miss your spot on the lane, either inside the spot or outside the spot, and still watch your bowling ball react properly and end up hitting the pocket.

Perhaps you have noticed when bowling on the Red Pattern that you can sometimes miss your spot on the lane by 2 - 5 boards and still see your ball hit the pocket.

This forgiveness in shotmaking the Red pattern provides is one reason we see very high average scores today in leagues across the country.

A center's standard “house shot” is considered the Red pattern.

Additionally, all house patterns that are not Blue or White patterns are considered Red by default.



Therefore, there are flexible ranges of oil volume and distribution of oil used by lane maintenance crews.

The Red Pattern does not make any specific provisions for the distance the oil is applied to the lane surface.

Normally, the application of oil ranges from a distance of 35 feet to 45 feet total distance from the foul line where the lane machine no longer buffs in oil on the lane surface and where the dry boards begin across the entire back end of the lane.

Depending on the philosophy of each bowling center maintenance team, variations of the Red pattern are noticeable from bowling center to center and all of which still fall into the category of the Red pattern.