ASTORIA Gene Ozzy Osborne is the go-to-guy for bowlers in the Columbia-Pacific region.

He began fitting bowling balls almost 40 years ago when John Guenther, a Professional Bowlers Association hall of fame bowler, taught him the craft. Osborne owned the Canby bowling alley for 31 years. Today, as the fitter at Lower Columbia Bowl in Astoria, he uses his coachs eye and an instinctual understanding of how a bowling ball moves to customize balls for bowlers on both sides of the Columbia River.

During the daytime, I can almost tell you whos bowling by the sound of how they lay the ball down, Osborne said.

Most days Osborne has at least one ball on his workbench waiting to be drilled.

When he started as a fitter, the balls were made of rubber or plastic over cork. They were heavy, hard and smelly to drill.

Some balls made in the 50s smelled just like asphalt to drill into them. They must have had a lot of crude oil in them, Osborne said. Those old balls last forever without showing wear patterns.

Most bowling balls these days are made of urethane, which has significantly changed how bowlers throw and care for their balls.

This looks like a nice smooth ball, but its actually reactive urethane, Osborne said, indicating a brightly colored ball. However, once Osborne puts the ball up next to a space heater, the ball revealed its porous nature and began to sweat oil it had picked up off the lanes.

Because the new urethane balls are porous, they sometimes bleed resin into the finger holes. So Osborne also fits plastic finger and thumb slugs into many of the balls he drills.

The urethane balls are lighter and softer so they also tend to develop wear patterns that Osborne buffs out with a resurfacing machine.

Everyone had one bowling ball in the old days. If you had two balls, you were a pro, he said.

These days, competitive bowlers often arrive at tournaments with a car full of bowling balls, each drilled to roll differently or to accommodate the size of the bowlers thumb, which changes over the course of a game.

Osborne bowled his first game in 1956 the day before he graduated from high school. His first game, he bowled an 88. He almost doubled that in the next game to 160.

A decade later, while working for Boeing in Seattle, Osborne found himself drawn back to the bowling alley.

The next thing I knew, I quit a job making four times as much to work in a bowling center because it was fun, he said. After three and half years he moved back to Eastern Oregon to work for a grocery chain.

Then in 1975 a friend asked him to manage a bowling alley in Pendleton. In 1976 he bought Canby Bowl, which he owned until 2007, when he sold the property.

Osborne has bowled on four state teams and bowled at the U.S. Masters as an amateur for six years in a row. He set the Oregon state record in 1981 for the highest average.

In 2005, Osborne was inducted into the Oregon State U.S. Bowling Congress hall of fame.

When drilling a ball, Osborne employs geometry and a bit of art to ensure that bowlers get a ball that fits them well.

Inside every bowling ball is a weight. The shape of the weight is different for every manufacturer. By placing the finger and thumbholes in different orientations relative to the weight, Osborne can change how the ball travels down the lane.

He recently drilled an Ebonite ball for a regular.

We found out about this ball and sold it to one guy. And he shot a 300 on his first night with it, Osborne said.

The alley sold 31 Ebonite balls in the next six weeks. For a while, I was calling Seattle or Sacramento (Calif.) every day saying, You got two of these balls?

Although the ball itself certainly plays a part in the way a bowler throws the ball, Osbornes attention to detail ensures that a good ball is also a good fit for the hand and the way the bowler wants the ball to move.

To make sure a ball fits comfortable on the bowlers hand, Osborne not only measures the span of the bowlers grip. He also tests the flexibility of the thumb and the angle of the fingers as they go into the ball.

For casual bowlers, hell place the holes so the ball rolls straight, but for serious bowlers Osborne can help them get a gentle arc or a sharp bend in the path of the ball.

He said hes stayed with bowling for so long because he likes the people and its competitive. When theyre bowling good, they have a lot of fun, he said.

For Osborne, the game continues to offer challenges. He has never made the 7-10 split and has been keeping track of how many hes missed. Its almost become a streak hes reluctant to break, he said.