JONESBORO, Ark. – Welcome to Jonesboro for the third stop of the 2020 PBA Tour season at the Hijinx Family Entertainment Center. The bowlers will be tackling two different patterns with the Shark 48 and Viper 36.

Here’s a breakdown of each pattern:

PBA Shark 48

The Shark is the PBA’s longest oil pattern in its library topping out at 48 feet and will be on the left lane. You are going to see a lot of bowlers keeping their angles tight and inside. There will be no deep, angular looks on this pattern. 

You may see a number of bowlers going straight to feed the ball to the pocket but with the high amount of rev rate on tour, you are going to see a lot play between the 15-20 board, slow their ball speed down, and use strong covers, cores, and low grit surfaces to keep the traction on the lane.

PBA Viper 36

Taking 12 feet off the Shark pattern, the Viper clocks out at 36 feet long. Urethane will come into play a lot throughout the week with some reactive mixed in to find a different look. 

With a near flat ratio of 1.67:1 and medium volume around 26mL, the Viper seems to be the talk here as the tougher pattern for most players. As transition occurs, this pattern will break down heavily and urethane will be a popular choice to control angles to the pocket.

Overall Analysis

Hijinx is a house that notoriously plays very tough when the PBA Tour rolls into northeast Arkansas. It’s a house where you hope you have carry on your side and your ball motion reads well from pair to pair.

“Pair to pair is always very tricky here in this building,” EJ Tackett stated before Wednesday’s qualifying round. “The guys who can keep up with the transition here are going to be successful this week.”

When watching the live stream on FloBowling, you will see some hot games in spots and not so hot in others. Pair to pair is crucial at this house more than others and it is an important obstacle among others going into the PBA Jonesboro Open.