TomSport.Net - from "buy" to "use"

Sports-gear addicts find money goes fast on equipment upgrades

29.05.10

Visiting an unfamiliar bowling alley, Tony Caturano is apt to arrive with eight custom balls. He'll check the temperature and humidity in each end of the building before starting to roll, testing for just the right friction and speed.

Then Mr. Caturano, 58, a construction manager at Miner & East Inc. in Addison, will start fiddling with his shoes. He has a different sole for every alley condition.

"Summer is the worst — it's humid, and the approaches become slow and tacky. You need a shoe bottom that won't stick," says Mr. Caturano, of Naperville, who bowls in three leagues.

"Guys used to kid me when I brought in my big equipment bags," he says. "But then I blow them away with a high score, and they start looking at the extra equipment with a different attitude."

The owner of three dozen balls at about $250 apiece, Mr. Caturano is a sports-equipment addict. Chances are, you know one: the guy with the basement full of discarded putters, or the woman who arrives at the