Over the past 6 months, I have had the unusual problem of losing the entire nail on my ring finger as a result of bowling.

The first time I started to lose the nail was in August 2008 when I switched to a new driller(we'll call him driller1). I was bowling a scratch tourney and the conditions forced me to have my hand in an aggressive position. I was using a freshly drilled ball that felt a little different from my other equipment. During the last set, I started to feel abnormal pain at the back of my ring finger nail and noticed a little bit of blood back there as well. After about a week or so, I realized that the nail had been severed and slightly pulled out from underneath the skin. A couple of days later I noticed a new nail growing right behind it. I later found out that the ball I was using was very poorly drilled. The middle finger span was just under an eighth short and the ring finger span was about a sixteenth long. So of course, I thought this was the problem. I removed the severed nail, had the ball fixed by a new driller(we'll call him driller2), took some time off, the nail grew back and I continued to bowl.

So, in about November 2008 during league, I felt that weird pain in my finger again. I was using a different ball in which I know had the correct span. The exact same thing had happened to my nail all over again. I tell driller2 about it and he tells me that this is probably being caused by the pitches being wrong in the finger holes of all my equipment drilled by driller1. Sure enough, he checked the pitches and found that they were all at 0 in both fingers when they were supposed to be a quarter reverse. Again, I remove the severed nail, have all my equipment fixed again, take some time off and continue bowling.

Well, I just bowled a tourney this past weekend and guess what? What the hell is going on here? I have no idea why this is happening, I'm getting very frustrated, and i'm missing out on a lot of cash right now because of this.

So, Ive decided to turn to my fellow BR'ers. You guys should know that I normally throw anywhere from 17-20mph with 475+ revs. My span is 4 3/4 by 4 13/16 total with grips and slug. I used to track really high on the ball and now, after about a year and all of these problems, I track really low on the ball. If anyone has any ideas or suggestions, I would appreciate your input very, very much. THX everyone
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What the Deuce?!!

I actually did go a half-size bigger with my ring finger grip and used protection tape after I changed the pitches. I just couldn't hang on to the ball that way and without the tape, the grip was far too large.

Thx for your input John
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What the Deuce?!!

Edited on 2/24/2009 4:20 PM

Here are my suggestions:

1) Consult a doctor first. You might have a dermatological condition that needs to be addressed.

2) Consider going to a golf glove like Pete Weber and Jeff Carter use. Cut the thumb out and go. I use one to control moisture (the top of my hand sweats) but it does have the side effect of lessening the stress on the skin of my hand by a huge amount. If you do this, you'll need to go up in insert sizes. I went from a 3 and 23 to a 13 and 25.

3) More reverse in the fingers.

Jess