Turning the Corner With Less Turn of the Wrist

After my worst two-week stretch of bowling in perhaps over a decade, I rolled a not-so-awful 625 this week.  What I'm encouraged about is that I stuck with my changes, and fought through 1 1/2 awful games, finishing strongly after a ball change and not missing the pocket for 16 frames.

Starting off with a 185, then having three opens in the first four frames of game two, almost put me in the same mood as the past two weeks.  I've matured a bit over the years, having once been a real hothead on the lanes, but those demons have come frightening close to reappearing recently.

But with my second ball change, I found the pocket, and didn't leave.  Game two went from 45 after four frames, to a 203, throwing strikes in all but two frames from there on (and one of those two was the 12th).

Then in game three, it was all nines or better on all pocket hits.  That makes 13 strikes in my final 19 shots, with the six non-strikes all being corner pins, which I converted (another very nice sign). A 237 final made me feel like perhaps I'm starting to turn the corner.

In my senior year in high school, I made changes to my game that initially caused me to bowl a little worse.  That's the norm for major changes, and while my recent changes aren't that radical, they do go against 30 years of habit. I'll try to post, with graphics, what the key changes look like.  But for now, I'll put them simply:

1) A more modern-looking release (pointer finger pointing down at release, and minimal wrist turn or flip)
2) Ball just rolling off the finger tips (so I'm not "squeezing")
3) Slightly higher backswing
4) A little more foot speed

And in case you recall my previous posts about form changes, I abandoned my "Del Ballard" approach last year.  It was causing me to have very little backswing, and when I tried to add some backswing, I was all over the place.

I'm determined to make these current changes stick, in part because my old friend and bowling pro wanted to see my hand behind the ball more, and not so much around the side.  These changes, particularly #s 1 & 2, help to accomplish that.