Understanding You as a Bowler: Bowling Ball PAP

Hi, Hank Boomershine here, USBC gold level coach, staying inside a beautiful Storm Products in the test facility. It's something unique today as we're going to talk a little bit more advanced, and things that you need to know as coaches, players, that it really helps you to understand what's going on in your own game. What's going on with your students and players so that you can really help line them up on the lanes today. I mean, many times in the past we talked about as coaches we can't always coach a bad fit. We would create some different reactions in the lane because the fit of the ball wasn't as good.

But in the last 10 years, in the last decade, we've really seen that it's really hard to coach bad ball reaction. And what I mean by that is you can have a player that's very physically sound in the way they approach the game, but yet when they have the ball going down the lane, things don't quite match up. They leave an extra 10 pin, maybe the ball, they don't get much room for air, and today's equipment, there's so much more variety and versatility and equipment. So, it's a very important factor that we understand the player, the environment, and the ball that they're throwing. It's a huge change that we see in coaching that we really need to understand that.

And the most important thing is understanding the player, like every player has an axis point. And what I mean by an axis point is we have a track on a bowling ball. So, the track on the bowling ball's where the ball first touches the lane and tracks down the lane. But what we have is a point 90 degrees to that, like the axle on a wheel. And it's that alignment.

So it's your Positive Axis Point. It's like your signature. It's like your thumbprint, your fingerprint. It is endemic to you. So as a coach, you need to know your player, and you need to know that, Hey, I need to be able to find that axis point, measure the track, find the axis point so that I know my player, because part of knowing the axis point is the layouts of the bowling balls and know how far my pin is from my axis point, which creates very different shape throughout the lane.

Does it roll early? Does it roll late? And understanding the balls that their throwing. So this segment, we're going to understand mapping out an axis point, and then taking the players' arsenal that they have, finding some axis points on those arsenals, and then lining them up on a couple of different patterns. So stay tuned.

It's a lot of good stuff today. We show you that Positive Axis Point, but the way you know we have to find it, and what's the best way to do it? I'm going to show you a couple of different ways to find a players' PAP. Now, the first thing that once again, as they throw the ball down the lane, you're going to catch the oil line. And notice that I've taken the yellow pencil and I've traced that oil line all the way around the bowling ball.

So, now we have that point of reference that we're looking for. If you're very fortunate enough to have an AMF Armadillo, which is a very nice tool, you can lay the Armadillo onto the bowling ball and there's lines across the top. And all you're trying to do is match the line to your oil line. It has a mark on the side and I'll turn that around to show you. You can just mark.

That's where the axis point is gonna be. You take your piece of tape, you place it on there. Now we have an axis point. That's the easiest way to do it, but not every pro shop or every coach is gonna have an Armadillo. I mean, do I recommend it?

Every pro shop should have one. As coaches, as you get more advanced, it makes it really quick and easy, but sometimes we don't have that luxury. So what I tell some coaches is, I tell them if they take a ball cup, a standard ball cup, and they try to get that track exactly parallel to the surface of that ball cup and get it very parallel. If we keep tilting it and turning it till we get it so that it seems very straight, we're going to get that so that it lines up. We're going to get that piece of tape to the top.

And that's where we just simply mark with your pencil. And then you put your piece of tape there. So it's one of those things. That's a second way to do it. And if we have the luxury of having a ball spinner, or in this case, an orbital ball ring, we can set that down there.

If we don't have that piece of tape pre-marked and we can keep turning that we're looking for the yellow line to get parallel. Pretty close. We're going to mark the top of that. And that's gonna get us pretty close to that axis point. But a lot of times coaches, you're trying to do that, and you're trying to map it, you're going to do that in the settee or the concourse, and you're going to put the piece of tape on the very first try.

Now it's not going to be dead perfect all the time in the first try. So, what you do is you make slight adjustments. It might take you a couple of times to do that but as you do it more and more, it becomes easier to do it. But the important thing about finding that axis point is, what that's trying to do is, once again we talk about, is understanding that pin distance to the PAP and understanding the player and what they have as far as their layouts in their bowling balls, in their specs. Okay, coaches and players.

We talked today about mapping out that PAP or the Positive Axis Point. Talked a little bit about telling you that we find that first track on the bowling ball, that first oil ring, and what that does is it's how you let go of it. It's when it touches the lane, it creates your axle, or that center where that 90 degrees to your track creates a Positive Axis Point. And that's your signature, that's your thumbprint. So every player has their Positive Axis Point.

So you as a coach or player, kind of understanding the layouts in your bowling ball and how they really affect what you see in ball reaction. So if we notice this ball, this is Lindsey's benchmark bowling ball, her Hysteria Solid Reactive Medium RG. So if we look, we take a prosector, a quarter scale, and we put that on the ball and we see that that distance from the center of that PAP to her pin is about four and a half inches. So it's about half way. And then we look at the distance to the track, it's about three and a quarter inches.

So we noticed, if you look at that, the distance to the pin to the PAP is a little farther than center. If it was exactly in the center, halfway between those two points, it'd roughly be about three and three eights, we call that leverage weight, you've heard that many many times, people talk about leverage weight, which is a strong pin position, creating the most amount of track flare for the bowling ball. Most amount of motion. So Lindsey's sweet spot is a little farther away. She likes those layouts a little farther away.

We talk about how players like that, certain layouts are going to work best for them. So noticing that as a coach you're now understanding the distance from that PAP to the pin. So, now we know that this ball should go a little farther down the line before it starts to create its motion and it should still give a strong back-end reaction. So you, as a coach, if you see a pin really close to that player's PAP, then you understand that that weight block's tilted on its side. So, it's tilted on its side.

So, now as it's rolling down the lane it doesn't create much flare very early roll, and not much back-end reaction. And that might have a specific purpose that a player likes to have control on the back end, but you might see another one where it's very much farther away from the players axis. It could be up to, say, six inches from a player's axis. And that creates a lot more length because the weight block now becomes more vertical as it goes down the lane which makes it create more length. So, half of mapping out the PAP is first of all understanding the type of player that you have, pin distances, how much tilt and rotation they might have.

And those are all things that you can watch and look for. But the thing is, what's the layout they have on their bowling ball? Why does it react the way it does, and sometimes making adjustments to their arsenal to make sure they have all the equipment they need with the right layout, with the right surfaces to match their game. So, understanding that PAP is very important because we need to know why the ball is doing what it does, and what works best for the player.