The wax is on the lane, only way you’d get it on your shoes is if you walk on the lane which you don’t. The pattern thing is a bit more complicated, veritasium

The wax is on the lane, only way you’d get it on your shoes is if you walk on the lane which you don’t. The pattern thing is a bit more complicated, veritasium has a video on it (and on bowling balls). Wax was introduced to protect the lanes, however players fairly quickly learned to use the wax, as it allows hooking more easily and severely, which makes hitting the right location at the right angle much easier. Bowling alleys will then use different patterns for different purposes e.g. a local alley will use a more forgiving pattern, while pro alleys will use a “sport pattern” from a variety of standard patterns (or possibly in-house) to tune the difficulty and for more interesting shots. House patterns are actually a lot simpler than pro patterns, usually it’s a simple sideways gradient (more in the center, less on the sides) going straight down to halfway to 2/3rds the lane. Aside from player satisfaction (it punishes mistakes less), a factor of them was simply saving oil. This is not new, complex patterns were first experimented with by the PBA in the 90s (spraying lanes by hand) to make shots harder, as the balls had advanced too much. Though it only became an official feature in the 2000s as machines became capable enough to print specific patterns, reliably. This means reading wax patterns has become an important skill of pro bowl. In essence it’s the opposite of what you think, sport lanes and events use patterns specifically designed to be more difficult on purpose.