Need a little help with a release issue

[Big Nick]

Back at the beginning of the summer when my wife and I started practicing for the fall leagues, I started working on changing my release from a full roller to a semi-roller. It took a lot of practice and a few lessons, but my full roller is gone and a few weeks ago I bowled my lifetime high game of 194. Fast forward to the opening night of our Sunday night mixed league and an old nemesis of mine has reared its head again and I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. I need a little advice on what might be causing this since I won't be able to have another lesson until next Wednesday and I have three more league nights between now and then.

Below is an illustration of where the oil tracks on my ball were before last night (on the left), and where they are now (on the right). Luckily it never tracks back to a full roller, but rolling over the thumb hole really kills the speed of the ball and my shot is really lacking consistency. I'd appreciate any advice that anyone can provide, and hopefully I'll make it through until my next lesson on the 19th.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/20038670/oiltrack.png

[striker12]

ok i use to be the same as you know i use to have my track go over my thumb but the thing i did at first was i tryed alot of different releases for a test to see if it is the release i was doing and it was soo all i did was adjsut the ball in my hand and made sure i had to in the same kinda spot right to the foul line and i will pulling it off the thumb but the one main thing i did was instead on my hand being on the outer part of the ball i put my hand on the inner part of the ball gave me alot of revs and same speed but took some time to controll that and i did that for awhile to get use to it jsut incase if i ever went over the thumb again.

so i went back to my old release after about a month and 1/2 and i was really close to the thumb soo i just did what i did before i moved my hand alittle more under the ball and i have seem to of gotten the track off the thumb.

but the thing i do know is i cup my wrist i tilt the ball towards me and turn my wrist to the left abit and i have gotten a good distance away from my thumb doing that and it seems to of works all i did was practiced like 3 times a weeks ad then had my coach at my league night to help me out abit more.

[Big Nick]

that's kind of hard to read without any punctuation, but I think I got the gist of it. Anyone else have any pointers? I heard back from my coach and it's definitely the 19th before he can get me in. This is going to be terrible if I can't stay in line with the average I set last week.

[bowl1820]

Your close to the thumb hole because your hand is in between a full roller (thumb in) and three quarter (thumb out) release.

Thumb In: the thumb is pointing toward your body.
Thumb Out: the thumb is pointing away from your body.

Basically your turning your hand to early, you need make sure that the thumb is held in the 1:00 position until the release. Then release the thumb and rotate the fingers.

[billf]

Exactly what Bowl1820 said. A common cause is not keeping the elbow pit facing your target and close to your body.

[Big Nick]

Thanks for the info! I'll give this a try during practice tonight before the league games start. Luckily my coach got back to me late yesterday afternoon and said that he can get me in on Thursday afternoon. Here's to hoping I can sort this out on my own and maybe get to do some real work with my coach instead of having to work on unlearning whatever it is I've picked up over the last two weeks.

[Big Nick]

I hate to double post, but I just had to let everyone know how tonight went..... AWESOME! I took billf and bowl1820's advice and worked on staying behind the ball until release, and things worked out pretty well. In fact, I don't think I rolled over the thumb hole at all tonight. My first game wasn't great, but somewhere near the middle of the second game it clicked. I quit worrying about missing and everything just started working again. I finished the second game with a turkey in the 10th frame for a 171. Including the turkey at the end of the 2nd game, I wound up bowling 7 straight strikes on the right lane and finished the third game with a 188. The team we were bowling against was trying to cheat a little, and we still wound up beating them, which was icing on the cake.