Best Ball for a Leftie

[bamabowler]

Just wondering if anyone has advice on the best ball for a leftie?

[J Anderson]

Just wondering if anyone has advice on the best ball for a leftie?

The lane conditions where you bowl are a much bigger consideration than which hand you roll with. Likewise the way you throw, how many revs, how fast, etc. are also more important than right or left.

[billf]

The one that gets them the most marks.

[edpup316]

If your left handed just pick a ball throw it straight up 5 and youll be fine.

[kev3inp]

Do I detect a little jealousy? Is the game so much easier on the left side? Then why are you still bowling right handed? Why make the game harder than it is? Do you put on a blindfold to play darts? There are a number of righties in my league who pipe it up 5 also. Shall I tell them they're doing it wrong?

[billf]

I know lefties that couldn't hit their mark if it was boards wide, just like some righties. The technique the good ones have is so fluid and smooth that yes, it makes me jealous. There are righties that are fluid and smooth in their own right but they just don't look as good as Parker Bohn III, Johnny Petraglia or three in my league. Oh, and none of the left-handers I mentioned have to play straight up 5, they can play the whole lane when needed.

[edpup316]

Do I detect a little jealousy? Is the game so much easier on the left side? Then why are you still bowling right handed? Why make the game harder than it is? Do you put on a blindfold to play darts? There are a number of righties in my league who pipe it up 5 also. Shall I tell them they're doing it wrong?

A little joke but their is some truth. And i am refering really only to lefties that are in that 180-210 range, those are usually the ones that can hit their marks and since there is far fewer lefties then righties then can stay are their marks much longer cause the oil is there longer generally. If I would have known the advantage lefties had when i started bowling 17 years ago i just might have bowled south paw but I've come to far to start over. Get my average to the 220's wasnt easy and im going to rid it for as long as i can.

[TheSheibs]

Being a lefty myself, I would say the best ball is one that is drilled for your left hand. Back in the day lefties had the advantage since we could naturally make the ball curve. Now with all the different cores you need to make sure the ball is drilled correctly. If they drill it like they do for a righty you might not be able to be consistent. I got a new Columbia 300 Freeze Hybrid two months ago and they actually put a balance hole in it to give the ball the right setup for being thrown by a lefty. It would also help to talk to someone who knows how to set up and drill a ball for a lefty. As for picking a ball, it depends on how much curve you want and how you throw the ball. Overall talk to someone who knows how to drill a ball for a lefty and who is able to see how you are currently throwing the ball. Then they can recommend the best ball in your price range.

[striker12]

it dose not matter if your a lefty or righty i use to throw lefty when i screwed up my wrist on my right hand it was difficult to learn when to reaslease but that the same time i was learning new things that i put into my wind for when i go back to right handed and the stuff i did loefty instantly came over to my right hand and i inproved soo much from misssing my target alotnto maby missing my target like 3-4 times per game other then for spares shots i got no target for those.

but what im saying is the ball that you want is a ball that you think you should get but if your starter into bowling and learning howto hook then i advice starting with a entry lvl ball a c300 freeze or others theres lots more.

just the thing i did when i started i bowled streght then when i was learning to hook a ballk i instantly went to a high performance ball witch untill this year i went back down to basics and got a new c300 freeze and starting all over again and going to inprove my games.

[J Anderson]

Being a lefty myself, I would say the best ball is one that is drilled for your left hand. Back in the day lefties had the advantage since we could naturally make the ball curve. Now with all the different cores you need to make sure the ball is drilled correctly. If they drill it like they do for a righty you might not be able to be consistent. I got a new Columbia 300 Freeze Hybrid two months ago and they actually put a balance hole in it to give the ball the right setup for being thrown by a lefty. It would also help to talk to someone who knows how to set up and drill a ball for a lefty. As for picking a ball, it depends on how much curve you want and how you throw the ball. Overall talk to someone who knows how to drill a ball for a lefty and who is able to see how you are currently throwing the ball. Then they can recommend the best ball in your price range.

No offense intended, but what evidence do you have for saying "we could naturally make the ball curve"? As a natural right hander, I started throwing almost dead straight. If this was a function of being right handed or copying my dad's style I don't know. When I learned to throw lefty, it was basically a mirror image of my right-handed throw, but again, I'm naturally right-handed so that doesn't really prove anything. Among right-handers that I've observed over the last 37 years, most seem to naturally roll straight, some roll a back-up ball, and some have a natural hook. On the left side, while most have some hook, I've met several who throw dead straight, none with a back-up, but then again its a much smaller statistical sample.
Of course I don't really know how natural these deliveries really are except for the kids that I coached last spring. I am skeptical that handedness causes a natural anything.
Maybe we can do a poll of the lefties out here as to whether they have a natural hook or not.

[striker12]

ummm john not saying anythingn about you or thesheibs comments but i think thesheibs measn that lefts have a advantage cause there more righys bowling then leftys soo when you get 7/8 rights and 1/8 leftys then the right side of the lane will lose oil aster and the ball would go anywhere but as for 1 lefty he could stick with 1 line threw the total of 3 games i think thats what he means by a natural hook.

if im wroung then i took my best guess at it.

i have played agent alot of leftys and they have beat me everytime mostly cause they are the only ones going up the left side of the lane and i carry my ball out to the 5 board from the 35 board

[TheSheibs]

Striker, you are partially right. I as a lefty do have the advantage that you mentioned. As for a natural hook, I was referring to 10-20 years ago before the oil patterns got crazy and the core of the ball started to get all the different types of curves that make people with little experience curve the ball like a pro or someone who has been bowling for years. As you know, most bowlers start with the ball resting on top of their hand, not to the side or anything. With doing the "hand shake" throw, your hand naturally puts some spin on the ball by rotating 90 degrees from horizontal to vertical towards the head pin. Back 10-20 years, this was all a lefty would need to do to get the necessary spin that causes the ball to curve. However, with all the different cores that balls have this has become something that is forgotten. It is what made lefties competitive against righties before the different cores and oil patterns started to be used. If you've never had a natural lefty explain how they bowl, you probably don't know any of this. When a sport is dominated by righties, you never hear about lefties and how we do what we do. Some of it IS simply a mirror image of a righty. However there are some things that a lefty does that a righty doesn't do or couldn't do with the same results. For example a lefty can stand to the far left or right and throw cross lane to pick up the 7 AND 10 pins. Where it's harder for a righty to do that and I've been told by some righties that they couldn't do that no matter how hard they tried.

[striker12]

oh ok at least i was close i have done lefty before when i hurt my right wrist but for me as a righting i use to beable to stand all the way left and shoot my 7 pins but know i cant cause i have hit the ball return soo many times soo i have had to move left 5 boards and im able to do it but for the 10 pins thats a different story.

for the 10 pins i stride left and i stad outside of the dots when i do it when i slid im right right at the thing not sure of the name of it but it devided the gutter on both lanes no clue of the name for that thing but when my arm comes down im throwing over the gutter but i dont toss the ball i let is down like normal but i create alot of speed with my spares but not as fast at palarma but close like it just sometimes go threw the gutter like it was never there but im slowing it down and moving back to the right abit to get my acruacy back because a few months ago i hit my elft ankle with my bowling ball hard enoph that it pulled my foot right into the air but lucky my right leg was not full on the kick back i was able to save my self, thats a different story for another time.


but tell you this i had 1 bowling style for my spare shots that i cant do no more but i was the only person in the world from what i was told that ever did it, i use to shoot my spares with just my thumb, all i had to do to hit spares/splits was spin the ball in my hand to a different spot and then go and throw it if i wanted a good hook i would put my fingers over the finger holes want less i would bring my hand down 90 degrees and for streght right on the other side of the fingers holes(srry could not figure out how to spell one word to put in there) and for a back up ball i was 90 degrees left of the fingers helped me with hitting the 4-7-10 split made it a few times, but know since i have a high backswing i cant do that no more, use to have a really low back swing that i ended up musleing the ball when i threw a ball soo had to go back to basic with a new swing .