Widen Your Bowling Ball Delivery Path

By: bowlingball.com, Originally Posted: 12/9/15; Updated: 12/16/20

Widen your bowling ball delivery path. Avoid trying to be so precise with each delivery that you tighten up and make an errant shot instead of good ones.

Although most of you are trained to use a spot on the lane as a sighting target and perhaps even taught to “take dead aim” at that spot on the lane, try using visualization of a three board wide track instead of a narrow spot for aiming purposes.

In fact, expand your sighting imagination further and visualize a three board wide bowling ball delivery path from the time the ball leaves your hand until impact with the pocket.

If you wish, you can visualize the path being in a color different than the color of the lane so your mind can see the ball tracking along the path color you visualize.

If you visualize a three board wide bowling ball delivery path, all you need do is to deliver your ball inside the path on its way to your spot on the lane and to the pocket.

The shape of this three board wide path depends on the angle of attack you choose to hit the pocket and on how much you hook your bowling ball. Using a print out of a bowling lane and some markers may help get you used to what you are trying to visualize while you are actually bowling.

If you can align your forward swing and release to the beginning portion of your ball delivery path and if you can keep the ball within the visualized three inch path for its journey on the front one-third of the lane, your chances of hitting the pocket are very good.

With proper alignment to the pocket based upon the given oil pattern, you do not have to be 100% precise by hitting the same small spot on the lane repeatedly.

You can, indeed, miss the center portion of your ball delivery path one board either direction and if you retain the right delivery angle, your chances in hitting the pocket remain very good.

Trying so hard to hit a small target on the lane can cause adverse results. Tension and the pressure of trying to be extremely accurate may produce inconsistent shotmaking because you lose the free-wheeling style of attack by trying too hard to steer your ball to a minute spot on the lane.



It is best to be accurate by hitting the pocket 60 feet from the foul line than at 15 feet away only.

There are many ways to sight when trying to hit a target on the lane. If you use this three board wide ball tracking visualization, then you eliminate excessive pressure trying to hit a small spot down the lane because of hitting the pocket successfully and with consistency.

It is important to realize that although we all believe we are better shot makers than we really might be, the house lane conditions (oiling pattern) at most every bowling center today is a very forgiving pattern which actually can steer your ball to the pocket if you are aligned correctly and if your ball is delivered along the right angle of attack.

Being deadly accurate is not a must to bowling well but delivering your bowling ball in the right tracking path is vital to hitting the pocket.

Next time you are practicing, try this three board delivery path sighting method.