If his armswing stayed in a single plane and he was throwing the ball straight, it would matter a lot less at which point it fell, because the arm and hand would be in line with his target. I've done that a lot of times: it falls off early because I relaxed too early, but my armswing was online, so the ball went straight towards the 10 pin. Admittedly, my armswing is not always that straight. I most assuredly do not have PBA-like consistency.

Dan Belcher wrote on 7/7/2011 8:09 AM:

I don't know if it's the same for Wes Malott, but when I miss a ten pin a mile left, it's usually for one of two reasons: either the ball just fell off my thumb because I need to adjust tape or my hand is unusually sweaty, or I couldn't slide. It's really common for me to fight slide issues on synthetic approaches near the gutter where there's less traffic. The approaches tend to be a little tacky but nothing awful where the majority of bowlers slide, but by the gutters where very few shots are thrown, they can get really sticky.