Work the Inside of the Ball or Stay Behind It? Part 2

In part one, I shared with you the importance of matching up to the oil pattern by changing ball roll. If you didn’t read part one, please stop right now and go read it. Perhaps the greatest beauty of BTM going digital is that you really can stop right now and go read part one without digging through all the magazines in your closet. Go ahead and read it. We’ll wait right here.

I made the case in part one about why it’s important to be able to go around the ball (increase axis rotation) at the release in order to match up on many lane conditions. For years now, coaches have been preaching to bowlers to work the inside of the ball and to stay behind it. It’s pretty much all you hear…except from me. While I have managed to convince a lot of players about the value of going around the ball when needed, I was alarmed at the number of bowlers who can’t do it no matter how hard they try.

Let’s say you are in a tournament and you are stringing lots of strikes throwing your usual 45 degrees of axis rotation. In game three, the ball keeps trying to hook at your toe even though you keep moving deeper, chasing the oil. All of the sudden you have no area at your breakpoint. The ball either goes out too far, causing you to miss the headpin right, or it checks up early and punches the clown in the nose ...