direction as the boards — and you started on 20, you should finish very close to 20.” But back to the approach…
after determining your tar- get, you’ll want to pay some attention to your body angle because that will match up to the angle you want your ball to travel. In that case, you won’t be finishing on the same board on which you started. Think of it in similar terms
ADVANTAGE LEFTIES?: Click on the play button (above left) to watch spe- cial video coverage of USBC Team USA star Shannon Pluhowsky discussing changing lane conditions for righties versus lefties.
FEET DON’T FAIL ME NOW...
make a move. That’s because the lanes are constantly changing. The oil on the lanes is always in flux, spreading out or burning up depending on how many balls are shot through it and where they travel on the lanes. When the lane seems to be getting tighter and hooking less, you can either keep missing or put your feet in gear.
J
ust when you think you’ve got yourself perfectly aligned and matched up well to the lanes, it’s time to
MATCH UP WITH THE LANES You’ll never be able to make an adjustment until you establish a base position, so the first thing any bowler needs to do is get aligned. Getting aligned is so com-
mon in bowling that you may not even realize you’re doing it. The first thing to do is identify where your feet will be posi- tioned on the approach. For a righty, you should note where your left foot is positioned so that when you finish your shot, you can easily tell if you walked a straight line up the approach. Since your left foot is your slide foot, it’ll be right there below you and hopefully at the same spot at the foul line that it was on the approach. USBC Gold Coach Susie
Minshew explains it this way: “A shot cannot be executed properly if you walk a differ- ent path to the foul line on every shot. Walk the direction of your projection. This means that you always try to walk par- allel to your ball path. If you are playing down the boards — a shot that goes in the same
to shooting a 7 or 10 pin spare. “When you have to cross the boards from right to left (for a right-hander), you will fin- ish left of where you started because you are projecting the ball left,” says Minshew. “When you are shooting a 7 pin, you don’t line up on the right side of the lane and then walk toward the 10 pin pull- ing the ball across your body to make it go left. You angle your body slightly toward that left corner making a ‘T’ with your shoulders and hips to the line you intend to throw. You walk a straight line that is angled toward the left side of the lane. The same is true of a strike shot; your angle is just less severe.”
CONDITIONS ARE EVERYTHING OK, so now that you’re all lined up and are shooting at your intended target, everything should be a breeze for the rest of the night, right? No, of course not. That’s
because the oil on the lanes is fluid, and fluid moves — espe- cially when dozens of bowling balls go sloshing through it. In most house shots, pro-
prietors are looking to make the lanes playable so that scores are high. To make the lanes balanced and playable, the pro- prietor will generally lay more oil in the middle of the lane and gradually taper it so that there is less oil on the outside part of the lane. “As a basic rule of thumb
for the league bowler who bowls on house conditions, there is always more oil inside
FALL 2010 USBOWLER 27
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