www.stormbowling.com/products/balls/skyrocket

The Sky Rocket™
Review Date: 5 August 2015

Reviewed by:
Storm/Roto Grip staffer John Brockland
Style: Stroker Rev Rate: 280-310
PAP: 5.50" over and 1" up

The SKY ROCKET is the pearl-covered successor to the hybrid Rocket which Storm released in February.  Like the Rocket, it features the Booster^TM core that helped fill a gap between the lower tier OUT series and the HYROAD in the Storm arsenal.  The SKY ROCKET features the proven R2S^TM pearl cover that bowlers are most recently familiar with on the HYROAD PEARL.

What was immediately noticeable about the SKY ROCKET is that it isn’t anywhere near as skid/flip in motion as one might automatically expect a pearl to be.  The Booster^TM  core really prevails in the way this ball performs.  It makes the SKY ROCKET a much smoother rolling pearl than I expected.

This has already been particularly helpful on flatter and tougher conditions for me.  At the PBA50 stop in Welch, MN this year, the Treasure Island Resort & Casino Open was contested on the PBA50 Viper pattern which is 39 feet in length.  That’s always been a tricky length pattern for me because, as in Welch, it often feels shorter than it really is when the lane surface provides a good deal of friction.   While the ICE and DEFY oils that are being used in championship settings these days seem to be a lot thicker – or at least they usually play that way for me -- the strange feature about the lane surface in Welch is that it still seems difficult to clear the front part of the lane cleanly sometimes.   For me, that creates the challenge of getting the ball to clear the fronts cleanly on the target line, but without too much ball speed and with enough roll so that the ball will read the midlane and not miss the eventual intended breakpoint.   The SKY ROCKET was a great tool for me in that regard during the first day of qualifying.  Going to it after game two helped me turn a struggling -41 start into an 8-game block of +63 which had me right in the mix.  Unfortunately, the rest of that tourney got worse for me from there because I made the mistake of not using enough surface as the midlane got tighter and tighter after the pattern was reapplied several times.

I drilled my SKY ROCKET exactly like my ROCKET.  The numbers are 65 x 5+ x 35 (pin above bridge center).

I haven’t had any extended opportunity to try the SKY ROCKET on typical STL house shots.  My intuition is that as much as I am forced into the middle of puddle needing to negotiate wet/dry, there will more than likely remain other options for me that are preferably for weekly league nights.  No doubt about it, though, the SKY ROCKET has definitely found a permanent place in the bag for me when headed to tournaments on tougher and flatter patterns.

Lbs. RG Diff. PSA 16 2.53 0.044 n/a 15 2.54 0.046 n/a 14 2.55 0.048 n/a 13 2.59 0.045 n/a 12 2.65 0.035 n/a