If You’re a Serious Bowler, You Need to Know About Bowling Lane Oil
Lately, Kegel has been steadily improving its automation, to the point where today’s machines do all the work without any human intervention.
The ways you and I continue because amateurs are oiled very differently from those used by pros.
At your local bowling center, public lanes are oiled in what is called a “high” ratio: the oil level present in the middle of an alley is eight to ten times higher than outside. On the far left and right of the alley, many public bowling alleys have no oil at all.
“On a normal model at your regular bowling center, there is an automatic correction,” Tackett explains. Since the lane edges contain very little oil, shots that drift to one side or the other will slow down; if the ball was thrown with the proper spin to guide it toward the middle of the lane, it will curl more effectively on the drier surface. “This makes it easier to hit the pocket.”
(By “the pocket,” Tacket means that sweet spot in the front corner of the standard 10-pin setup. For right-handed bowlers, this is the space between the first and third pins slightly to the right of center; for left-handers, it’s on the left side.)
In the pros, however, the patterns are much more difficult. Instead of 8:1 or even 10:1 ratios between the middle of the lane and the outside, the PBA uses ratios of 3:1 and lower, even up to almost 1:1 in some cases. Learning how each board is oiled at the start of a match allows pros to map out their ideal shots. “You have to be a lot more precise, not only with where you place the ball on the lane, but also with the speed you throw it and the revolutions you apply to the ball,” says Tackett.
Oil models also vary in terms of track length from 60 feet. Many common designs extend the first 40 feet before the oil diminishes near the pins, but several variations exist.
As lane oil technology has improved, understanding and adjusting to lane oil patterns and ratios has become an outsized tactical element for professional bowlers. Tackett compares it, in some ways, to golf.
“An oil model basically adds water, trees and bunkers,” he says. “It adds obstacles to the path.”
The PBA, the sport’s governing body, loves these comparisons. Rather than using the latest technological advances in lane oil to standardize lanes in every PBA competition, the organization takes the opposite approach, intentionally using varying conditions across different events to challenge top bowlers.
“It forces players to think, adapt and create, which is how we test for greatness,” PBA commissioner Tom Clark said via email. “It’s what makes the sport more exciting, interesting and entertaining every week.”
The PBA has a library of 20-way oil models for the 2026 Kegel season, which use different ratios, lengths and even specific oil formulations, each with its own character. A different pattern is used at virtually every event of the season. For example, the PBA Tournament of Champions the week of April 20 used the “Don Johnson 40” pattern, named after famous bowler Don Johnson, with the “40” meaning the length of the pattern in feet.
