Regarding pitches.  This may be a stupid question but I will ask it.  When holding the ball, should your palm lay completely flat on the ball, like if you lay your flat on a basketball and your entire palm is on the ball?  If so, then it appears I need a lot of lateral out pitch in my thumb.  If i lay my hand on the edge of my desk with the thumb off the desk, my thumb (righty) points left.  But, if i do the coke bottle test where my entire palm isn't on something, it points to my ring finger, indicating I need palm lateral.  The reason I ask, is because Bob7 stated that he had a double jointed thumb, describing it exactly as mine.  He has the same situation, and he found that lateral out does him wonders (like i said about the entire palm covering the ball).  Perhaps the same would work for me?  Maybe I need pictures or something to explain this.  I should also note, that normally when I hold the ball, part of my hand is off the ball, so the entire hand isn't actually on the ball.

Thanks to anyone who helps.
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-Andy

Brunswick Unofficial Amateur Staffer

I should add, that when I bowl, I notice a black spot on the inside tip of my thumb.  I thought nothing of it, but I saw some post where it said something like this was actually damage, and eventually would hurt my nerves.  So would it make sense then, to pitch my thumb to prevent this (meaning out)?
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-Andy

Brunswick Unofficial Amateur Staffer

Yes if you held your hand in the ball with the ball on a table with finger holes up and thumb towards your body.  Now pull your hand out of ball slowly.  As soon as thumb leaves the ball with the back of thumb towards you and tip of thumb down towards floor.

Is damage in the lower left corner of nail.  Yes in that case you must decrease your lateral right pitch and move away from pain by pitching less right or even more left than you are now.  If damage is on back of thumbnail then you have too little reverse or too much forward. OR too short a span!

Nerve damage is NOT on the nail.  It is at the top of the thumb on the flat surface which touches the ball if one has too much forward combined with too little bevel for that position.  It will be indicated by shooting pain which feels electric in nature and a black line accross the thumb at the front or flat surface of the thumb.  Yeeeeooooooowwwwww!

REgards,

Luckylefty


Edited on 10/22/2004 11:05 PM

On to your original question.  

Should one's palm lay flat on the ball.

In this area I defer to the mighty T-God.  Preacher of flat palm on the ball for heavier roll for laying a ball down in oil.  I believe this also means less axis tilt.

Recently he has given me some insight into this area and I will try to relate it here.  Yes this was a future post that I was going to put here after testing BUT,
I'll try to forge ahead!

To me it is a concept that I think of as Thumb Finger lateral pitch coordination!

For example one correctly tests at 1/4 lateral under palm in the coke bottle test.  This usually means that when one then puts his lateral finger pitches in at neutral say 3/8 left middle finger pitch and 3/8 right ring finger pitch(for the wrongsiding righty) then his thumb pitch will be 1/4 right pitch for the thumb!  

Now what does it look like.  Well it means that there really will not be much palm on the ball.  

How does one get more palm on the ball.  Well one way for the righthander would be to rotate the finger and Thumb pitches together to the left!  YES in other words if we assume that we have now established a coordination of thumb and finger pitches that will stay static.  In other words if the fingers are neutral(which means split the difference in pitches = 0, or 3/8 3/8 or 1/4, 1/4 or 7/8left and 7/8 right).  THEN the thumb is 1/4 right.

To get the thumb to 0 lateral pitch we must rotate thumb 1/4 of an inch left and also rotate the fingers 1/4 left maintaining the anatomical coordination of out thumb and finger pitches.  In other words we will now end up with 0 thumb and fingers will now be 5/8 left middle and 1/8 right ring.  The relationship is the same between the thumb and the finger pitches in this case but now we notice two things.

1. There is more palm on the ball.  
2. Our axis tilt has been decreased and now we are better bowlers on oil!

I was at the point of actually testing some ideas like this.  So this post is a little before the usual testing I do before posting a concept.

Two questions to ponder.
1. Do you bowl on oil?
2. Do you want less axis tilt?
3. Do you bowl on the left or the right.  Depending on where you are you want to achieve different things usually.  On the left combat greater head oil.
On the right get thru the dryer heads usually.  T-God the ever thinking observer of the bowling condition believes that different grips are called for on different sides of the pond!

I was going to try this less axis tilt tweak and get back to you all but not quite there.

However I had done the opposite.  Moved my thumb to the lateral under side(left for me)  and also moved my pitches of my fingers a little bit more to the lateral under side also(more left also and I moved the fingers more).
In other words I am no longer neutral in the fingers.  I am more like 1/2 left  ring and 1/4 right middle.

This has had three effects:
1. Less axis rotation
2. More axis tilt
3. Less palm on ball
4. For whatever reason the movement of my fingers to more left pitch combined with leaving my thumb where it was(left pitch) combined with some properly chosen low rg balls has led to a recent rash of wonderful high scoring on a condition classified as long but very light oil volume!

REgards,

Luckylefty
PS yes ak_57 YOU did steal my thunder but it was going to come out sometime!
PPs Thanks again T-god!