Bowling release

Question
Hello,
I am 53 and been bowling most of my life. Im right handed and my release has always been up the right side of the ball, counter clockwise rotation, hooking the ball right to left. I dont put a ton on the ball, my line is 2nd arrow straight down and in. For spares I come straight up the back of the ball and it goes straight.
Recently I joined a PBA Experience league. Last week we bowled on a heavy oil Kegel pattern. There were two gentlemen on my pair who were throwing harder shell balls than mine, who released their strike balls straight up the back, and got considerably more hook on the ball than I could. I looked at their ball layouts and they were very close to mine (Pin up by the ring finger. For the life of me I cant figure out how to hook the ball by releasing it straight up the back like that, how is that possible ?

Answer
Marty,
The keys to their reaction could be their ball speed, ball layout, weight holes, or proper surface preparation.

Longer or heavier, or long/heavy patterns are a challenge. But when you know the length of the pattern, prepping the ball to gain enough friction for your skills is crucial to control the lane sufficiently to score well. The assumption often is dull/rough surface on a ball will help it hook on oily lanes. Sometimes, if the ball hooks too early, there is nothing left at the pins and the ball breaks weakly or hits poorly. Surface preparation for slower speed players can include smooth/shiny/pearl coverstocks on heavy oil. Were the players slower ball speed then you?

Not enough info to determine what happened for sure, but if you know the pattern and can provide more info I can guess.

I commend you on trying the Kegel Pattern league. Tougher conditions are one of the ways to get better and identify what you might want to work on to improve. The release you describe may provide enough on soft house conditions, but you may want to work on improving your release to have a stronger game for the heavy/longer patterns. Or drill an option with much stronger core help for just this situation (probably not big help on normal league night- too much backend, violent reaction).

The pin near the ring finger may roll great for some and terrible for others, because your axis tilt, axis rotation and rev rate utilizes the cover and core to create ball reaction where you need it on the lane. Most standard league layouts (ball setups for soft house conditions)   would be terrible on long, heavy or long/heavy conditions.

I hope I covered some of what you were wondering. getting more info from you will help us determine more specifically what happened. Thanks for the question.