The Magic Potion for Ideal Ball Motion

Always Be Smooth

Smooth ball reaction is good ball reaction.  That is the long and the short of it.  However, as we have already discussed, you can’t produce that same motion on all patterns using one ball.  There are three key components that I like my bowlers to keep an eye on when they are looking for this ideal ball motion. 

Get Online!  The first is that the ball can stay on line.  A ball that creates too much friction will read the lane early and will not stay on line toward its target.  Furthermore, a ball that does not create enough friction will “back up” through the front of the lane and not stay on line toward its target.  Mo Pinel uses the term “skid” for this component of ball motion.  I prefer to narrow it down to staying on line simply because it is a bit more specific. 

Sometimes keying in on this component is as simple as shining or scuffing a ball to give it the right kind of contact on the lane.  However, sometimes this means changing to a ball with a different shell.  The bowler must be mindful of what his or her ball is doing all the way through the lane, including what it does prior to when it “hooks.”

Smooth It Out Next, the bowler has to keep an eye on the motion that the ball makes down lane.  This is absolutely crucial to making a pattern play as easy as possible.  A jerky ball reaction will exaggerate the changes in the pattern, resulting in some ugly splits and designer spares to convert. 

Again, the brilliant Mo refers to this stage in ball motion as the hook stage.  However, any kind of change in direction can be qualified as “hook” and that concerns me.  What we want to see is a smooth motion that begins, ideally, a touch before the end of the pattern.  If a bowler relies on the end of the pattern for the hook, they will often experience over/under.

To Be Continued Rather than simply labeling this stage as the “roll” stage, I choose to refer to it as the “continue” stage.  The ball “rolls” all the way down the lane.  To label a phase as simply “roll” is so vague; I question whether people understand the goal.   What we want is the ball making a smooth motion at the end of the pattern and continuing through the pins.

Continuation through the pins is a difficult concept to grasp, but is every bit as important as the other aspects of ball motion.  A ball that continues to hook smoothly through the pins will leave, at best, nine pins for right handed bowlers.  Conversely, a ball that hooks smoothly, but appears to straighten out or bounce off of the pins is going to leave a lot of back row spares as well.

In order for the ball to continue through the pins, the ball needs to have very little axis tilt and rotation.  What this means is that you will see your ball get into a heavy, end over end roll through the pins.  Furthermore, the rev rate of the ball is at its highest at this point.  Obviously, those two factors go hand in hand. 

I would like to add at this point that none of what I am saying is original.  Just as every batting coach in the major leagues is teaching the exact same thing, but using different verbiage, I am simply reciting exactly what good coaches have for years in my own language.  I would like to say a special thank you to Mo Pinel, Brad Angelo, and Rick Benoit who have articulated ball motion so eloquently to me at different points in my life. 

A ball that has been kept on line through the front of the pattern, rolled smoothly at the breakpoint, and continued through the pins will strike far more often than any other combination of motions.  Next, we need to take a look at the balls in the Motiv bowling ball line and determine how to outfit a bowler with a sound, well rounded arsenal to produce this on line, smooth, continuous motion.