Lofting can work, the pros do it often, but sometimes your shot just doesn't work well with it. For instance, I know Pete Weber has said several times that he can't loft the gutter.


What I did was to learn too throw several shots by changing hand positions etc. Now I'm not great at all of these yet, but I can put more hand in the ball and crank it a bit more if its wetter, come more up the back of the ball with almost zero turn and then if all else fails, I'll just break everything down  move to the outside and hum it.


I'm also learning to change positions within all of that to change how it comes off my hand to change the axis tilt and rotation.

Lofting may be the easier of them to do though, I just have been very good at doing it myself 
 

I'm having a little bit of trouble understanding what you mean by "early hook." It sounds as if you mean that the ball is reading the break point too soon, which causes the ball to knife through the face. Assuming that is correct, you may also want to consider going to a more aggressive ball, probably something solid or something with a little more surface. This may sound strange, but a more aggressive ball is going to bleed off some of its energy as it goes through the heads and into the midlane, which should tame it down at the back of the lane. A lot of higher rev pros put this practice into play on the shorter PBA patters - think Cheetah, Viper, and whatever that new short one is. Everyone thinks that they'll use their weak stuff on those patterns, but a lot of times that won't work because the ball wants to store energy and go sideways once it hits the back of the pattern. As such, these guys use their more aggressive stuff so that the ball spends some of its energy and comes off the back of the pattern smoother. Obviously, don't take your most aggressive ball and scuff it to 360 grit in order to do this! Just try balling up to something a bit stronger, and see if that helps. If it does, great. If it doesn't, the suggestions the previous posters made are possibilities as well.

To add to what Armour said, check out this great article by Ron Clifton titled Finger Dancing. There has been more than a few occasions where this has really saved my butt!

http://www.bowl4fun.com/ron/tip11.htm

Note: It can take some practice to get comfortable with this and learn the effect it will have on each ball. Coupled with wrist position, starting ball height, and moving laterally and vertically on the approach this can do wonders to tweak a balls reaction and is immensely helpful if you're having trouble carrying.

Thanks for all the helpful hints.  I'm excited to try all the suggestions, but I'm going to try using a more aggressive ball first since I would of never thought of it.  I understand the theory, but while I can understand it would calm my backend, I do worry that the ball will roll out.  But I'll give it a shot and report back later.

thanks

again.

Must say I'm a little shocked at how much moving the fingers will change a balls reaction. Happy to say I can do the whole bending the finger under with no discomfort, now just a matter of getting the feel of these. Moving the finger way in felt really weird but I liked the ball reaction tbh. I generally have my index way out naturally so it felt like I was gonna drop it, but it rolled really well for me.

I've always been a big fan of those finger changes as well. I should probably go to that adjustment more often than I do, but it can really help give you just the little tweak you need.