Best Bowling Shammy (2026)

The best bowling shammy for most UK bowlers is a leather one, because leather soaks up lane oil where microfibre tends to move it around. After that it comes down to size, sides and price. A hand-sized pad such as the RocketBilly at £13.95 or the Kaizen at £20.00 is enough for wiping between shots.

We make the Kaizen Bowling Shammy, so we have kept this guide to facts you can check, with sources at the bottom.

Bowling lanes are oiled, and some of that oil ends up on your ball every shot. A shammy wipes it off before the next delivery, so the ball meets the lane in the same state each time.

Brunswick's own ball care chart says to wipe with a shammy between shots and to use a proper ball cleaner after bowling. Those are two separate jobs, and only the first is allowed during a game. The USBC rule further down sets out exactly what you can and cannot do once competition has started.

Leather shammies and microfibre towels both wipe a ball. They behave differently with oil.

Leather has a nap that holds oil. Genesis says the nap of its buffalo leather absorbs oil and dirt better than cotton, microfibre or other towels, and Hammer's Amazon listing says its leather pad removes dirt and oil better than microfibre. Those are manufacturers' claims rather than independent tests, and our own listing makes the same claim for Kaizen's buffalo leather. Take them for what they are.

Microfibre is cheap, soft and easy to wash. It is a fine towel for your hands or for wiping dust off. A saturated microfibre towel can push oil back onto the ball instead of removing it, so if you use one, swap it for a clean one before it is wet through.

Leather fills up too. A leather shammy that has soaked up a few sessions of oil stops lifting oil as well as it did. Washing it brings it back, which is why the care section below matters as much as the material.

Buffalo leather is the thicker option, and the argument for thickness is simply that there is more material to soak oil into before the pad needs washing. Genesis lists its buffalo leather Pure Pad at 6 mm and calls 3 to 4 mm the industry standard, though that benchmark is Genesis's own and we could not find an independent source for it. The Kaizen shammy measures 6.2 mm on digital calipers, so it sits in the same bracket as the Pure Pad. Those are the only two figures in this guide you can compare directly, because no other maker here publishes a thickness at all.

The USBC rule decides what you can do during a league game or tournament. Rule 18 says that once competition starts, a ball cannot be cleaned with any liquid or cleaning agent, and cannot have powder, rosin or any other foreign material on it. If a foreign substance gets on the ball and a dry towel will not remove it, you can use an approved cleaner only with consent from a league or tournament officer. A dry shammy is fine. Competition starts when any bowler throws a ball for score.

UK leagues set their own rules on top of that, so check yours before you assume.

Wash it when it stops lifting oil as well as it did, or when it starts to feel slick.