Ran across this test in my reading:


check your span. check the fit of your thumb. this is important. put your hand in the ball. push down on your hand with your other hand. if your thumb presses up against the back of the thumb hole, your span is too short. put your hand in the ball. swing the ball. does both fingers feel the same. if 16 each finger should feel 8 pounds. your thumb should only fit one way. if you can swivel your thumb more than a 1/8",your thumb hole is too big or shaped badly. nobody has a perfectly round thumb. the art of drilling is to bevel an exact mold with no imperfections. i start one or 2 sizes smaller & work the hole out to fit exactly. this eliminates any squeeze. a good driller will do this.

Amature, place your hand in the ball and see if your fingernails are pressing against the back of the holes, if so the span is too long, if not the span is probably fine.

I'll check for that tomorrow when I'm at the Pro Shop where the ball that's close to the right span is. How would you check for spans that are a bit too short?

The same way, if you lay your fingers across the holes and the span is less than 1/8" shorter than 1/2 way then it is too short, but your hand needs to be relaxed, no tension or stretch in it, just laid across the holes.

There is not as much danger of injury from a short span as there is with a long span, just some uncomfortable rubbing on the thumb and or fingers.

I got my span fixed now. I'm actualy midway on the middle finger now, maybe 1/16 or 1/8 longer than midway on the ring. Definitely feels relaxed and my fingers don't press against the back of the holes. Currently have 1/2 forward and still squeezing quite a bit. I could possibly get one more piece of tape in and it'd be a little better but I think gravity is strong enough to pull it off my hand no matter what. At this rate I won't be surprised if I need 3/4 forward. That seems excessive, but the span is something like 3 7/8 MF and 3 11/16 RF.

Let me know what you guys think.

You looked like you were pretty tall. I'm suprised your hands are so small.

Lefty he said squeezing the ball. Say if the ball is drilled right the ball holds you slightly. If he is squeezing it , it sounds like he is drilled short spanned. He said the back of his finger was sore on the start but that would be too long a span. I use full finger tip so putting your fingers in so deep leaves me outside on help, I didn't say anything, but I have a Pro Shop, I drill all my equipement, Charles does bout all the commercial.. But You say this guy looks tall but uing a 3" + span, man that sure is a close span. If he is close to any one, see how deep he is running his fingers, he could be varying his span by varying how deep he is putting his fingers. With finger tip. I am tight on fingers and tight on thumb. I run 1/4 reverse on both fingers with 3/8 side so my fingers are almost straight up and down sides and a good finger grip and a full 3/4 reverse thumb with no side and a 5" span on the ring and 4 7/8" on the middle so there is no room for varying on hand position. He may have to change his span and finger depth. My fingers got so sore I could hardly throw so I had to change. I was running semi finger tip at the time so I went to full finger and it stopped the problem. No more sore thumb, no more sore finger tips and nails.. Different things work for different people. Its hard to say unless you get some one to look things over, Huh?

Amature, it is good to hear you got your span fixed, if your hand is that small, then don't be surprised if you don't have to keep going forward with the thumb until it stops slipping off, don't let the numbers sway you one way or another, either it it fits right or it doesn't, keep experimenting with different pitches until you find the right one.

Has the pain in your fingers gone away?

I only weigh 125lb or so. I don't have big hands but I consider myself to have long fingers. The only reason other people have longer spans around there than me is they either have even longer/bigger hands than me or they have stretched spans.



All right, I'll see if my driller will budge and give me more forward. I never had any pain in my fingers though. You must be referring to my thumb. Due to the squeezing I had to do for league with it(4 games), I'm going to have to say no. The back of my thumb shouldn't be ripping anymore, but the side might. I think that's my spare ball, I mentioned it to my driller and he said we might just need a little more room in the thumb hole since it's rubbing. Hopefully it's an easy fix.

Just keep going forward until you hang up, it sounds like you have learned to not squeeze the ball and you will be able to tell when you have gone too far, it may take a few more trips to the shop so have patients.