I am involved in a weird situation in my bowling league. On the first night of bowling, the house inadvertently put down a Sport pattern (Wolf, if you must know) on the first five pairs, and the regular "top-hat" league shot on the remaining 22 lanes. Needless to say, scores were down on those five pairs - WAY down. The high series on my team was 456, and the highest set on the five pairs was a 518. There were a number of 210 - 230 average bowler on those lanes. A bit humbling, yes, but everyone faced the same shot using the equipment they brought expecting a league pattern. In my opinion, the winning and losing was fair-and-square.
So, a couple of the more butthurt members filed some sort of protest to have the games thrown out and re-bowled. The house stepped-in and apologized, the league officers consulted with the local association and were apparently told that there are grounds to declare the games null and void and re-bowl them. I can't find any references in the rule book as to what criteria must be met in order to declare a match null and void. The only rule that mentions it is 103, and there is a hypothetical example given involving a rules violation. I don't think there are grounds w/r to the rule book that justify the null and void status because the house screwed-up. What next - protesting a match because of a slow rack? It was then argued that the teams that bowled on the difficult lanes would end up having lower entering averages thus giving them an unfair advantage of higher handicaps. Additionally, it was mentioned that those teams would also suffer from reduced pinfall totals that could affect their outcomes in the standings. Anyway, the league BOD voted to throw out the results of those 5 matches and have the 10 teams involved re-bowl them on some other night.
I'm more than a little aggravated that the three wins we recorded under difficult circumstances that night are being thrown out, and those that lost are getting a do-over. I'm not normally such a douche, but mulligans should only be given during casual golf rounds. If we don't take at least three wins when we re-bowl my team is going to be pretty pissed.
In the grand scheme of things this issue is of little consequence; but my time is being wasted having to re-bowl, the reasoning behind it is flawed, and I can't seem to let it go.
Sorry for the rant - just had to vent!!!
I hope everyone is bowling well so far this season.
