The Menace™
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 MENACE is the successor to the SINISTER which was
released last August in the strongest hook potential sector of the Roto Grip
arsenal.
It is built on the same good rolling asymmetrical CageTM
core as the SINISTER and is wrapped with a 74HTM solid
covertock. Roto Grip’s
rating system situates it with two points more overall hook potential
than the HYPER CELL and the same hook potential as the SINISTER.
However, the solid cover here has a
grit rating six points less
than the HYPER CELL’s cover and two points less than the SINISTER’s
hybrid cover.
Like the SINISTER and the HYPER CELL, the MENACE is
strong and can handle heavy volume with no problem.
In fact, heavy volume is the MENACE’s best environment.
For me, the noticeable difference from the HYPER CELL comes from
the shot shape that the CageTM core produces.
I liked the shot shape I got from the SINISTER (more length and
more angular than the HYPER CELL), but I wasn’t bowling a lot of
tournaments at the time and at home in the STL it never went through the
pins very well. With
little experience with it, I went to it in desperation at the 11th
Frame.com Open in 2014 the last game of qualifying and it got me a 268
game to make the cut on the number.
I should have given the SINISTER more of a chance before giving
it away. After what
I’ve seen so far from the MENACE, I won’t make the same mistake with
this one. It still won’t
likely be my favorite option at home in the STL.
There’s too much friction at
home for the MENACE to be the right tool.
Because I gave away my SINISTER and haven’t yet gotten
another, I haven’t thrown it side by side with the MENACE.
But relying on memory, I believe the MENACE is even a little
cleaner and longer than the SINISTER.
For a layout, I went with a strong drilling that works well for
me on heavy volume. The pin is
under my ring finger. The
numbers are 55 x 4.5 x 75 (the VAL angle may be a little bigger…I didn’t
write the specs down and don’t exactly remember).
There is a weight hole roughly at P3.
The first outing with the MENACE was during the PBA50
Treasure Island Resort & Casino Open in Welch, MN.
I had it at box finish -- a pretty dull 3000 grit sanded -- which
was too much surface for the part of the lane I was in.
Not having seen the PBA50 Viper pattern before, I didn’t think at
the time to move even deeper into the middle of the lane because I just
presumed the pattern was flatter there and that I wouldn’t find more
push. Where I was playing
there wasn’t enough volume and I left a lot of flat 10 pins with it.
I polished it and then hit it lightly by hand with 1000 the
second day of qualifying after I saw how other guys who had a good look
had theirs. For me, that
was too much in the other direction and only gave me a lot of front to
back over/under. That does
tell you, though, that the MENACE is easily amenable to surface
tweaking. I will say, too,
that this coverstock is really absorbent and lane shines pretty quickly.
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