soupy1957 wrote:When they say “a ball goes longer,” ......What are they really saying? Are they saying that it travels down the lane further before it begins to hook? I haven’t figured out the different ways that they describe the reaction of a bowling ball, other than the way it spins on the oil, and the way it hooks.
So much to LEARN!!!!
Yeah, a lot of confusing terms have cropped up over the years and a kind of jargon has developed in bowling that new bowlers find themselves scratching their heads over like these people are speaking a foreign language.
He put "surface" on a ball. As if a ball has no surface until he put it on? Meaningless.
The lanes are "Tight." Huh? That means nothing to a layman.
My bowling ball "wiggled" when it got downlane. Huh?
And so on...
To your question:
My understanding of "Long" means that a ball skids further through the oil before getting traction.
This results in a ball that hooks later and has a later reaction.
If the ball is an aggressive pearl then it will flip very violently once it gets friction.
If it is a ball that has a higher grit surface, is plastic and/or is friction challenged, then it may hook so late it cannot get into the roll phase and will deflect off the pins.
The goal is for a ball to go through all phases of ball motion:
Skid
Hook
Roll
When you first release the ball it is rotating and skidding though the oil in the front of the lane.
As the ball gets further up the lane it starts to grab the lane and as it does it begins to turn towards the pins.
This is called the hook phase.
Once the ball fully grabs the lane and is no longer "spinning its wheels" it is in what is called the Roll Phase.
Now the ball is rolling with full traction and will drive into the pins strongly with little deflection.
A bowling ball is like car tires.
Imagine you gun it and you are driving on ice.
The tires spin but get no traction.
This is the "Skid Phase"
Now imagine that the car starts to leave the ice and just starts to hit the road, but the road still has some very thin ice on it, but the tires are just starting to grab.
This is the "Hook Phase."
No imagine the car finally hits the dry road and those spinning tires suddenly grab and the car jerks forward hard.
This the "Roll Phase."