Carrydown is more prominent with less porous surfaces, such as polished equipment and plastic balls, but even the "sponges" can push oil into the backends if the volume is sufficient. As Lefty noted as well, sometimes burnout can give you the false perception of carrydown because of the weaker reaction, but the weaker reaction is due to energy loss before the backend.

You have to be able to read your ball and determine where your energy loss is, but that's not always easy. Experience will help over time, but even then you have to be perceptive enough and know you rolled a good ball. You cannot adjust from a poorly thrown ball.

Demo, are you kidding? The article was written by Joe Slowinski who is one of the best technical bowling writers I have seen and I have seen them all. If Joe says there is no carry down on the lane they did the study on, then I would bet your life there is no carry down on that lane.

The point to the article was that if you experience "carrydown" then the proper adjustment might just be to go weaker and move inside as opposed to going to a stronger ball and moving outside. The study showed that the oil dissipated from the heads first, this caused the ball to lose axis rotation early and then hit the oil in the midlane and skid past the break point. The actual carrydown from the ball past the end of the oil pattern didn't affect the reaction of the ball as it was already skidding still from losing energy early and then hitting the oil before the end of the pattern. If the bowler moved into the oil, or used a weaker ball, then the ball wouldn't lose energy early and would retain enough side rotation to make a strong move at the break point instead of skidding.

Demo you should try reading these articles before you make uninformed comments on them and making yourself look bad.

As everyone in this thread posting can probably see, this is one of the most complicated issues that we as bowlers have to deal with. I was talking to a couple of my coaches on the weekend, and we got on the topic of lane conditions, and I had to really think about some of the things that they said. When learning about lane conditions, this is how I imagine most people end up learning, usually in this order. (This is how it was for me, at least.) After a while, lanes are going to change and break down. The ball starts to hook more, so that means the lanes are burning up. On a house shot/easy shot, that usually means just move left, keep going. On a hard shot, move to where there's oil. Simple, right? If you're playing on a heavily oiled shot, and your ball starts to skid, that means oil is being pushed. (ala, carrydown.) So that means tighten up, or slow down, use stronger ball, whatever, tons of things to do. And for a big part of it, that's how lane transition works. What a lot of people don't understand though, which is the heart of the article and what my coaches were telling me about, is that some of those things almost work in reverse. I proposed that if my ball is not getting to the pocket in time, one adjustment I could make is to lay my ball down sooner. This would get it into a roll sooner, and get it hooking sooner down the lane, entering the pocket better. Makes sense, right? Well, what if there's a ton of oil in the heads? All of a sudden, your ball skids more. It works inversely as well. The heads are drier, your ball is going to start rolling earlier, THEN hit oil. Makes complete sense that a ball would be weaker under that circumstance. Another instance my coach said was that lofting could get the ball to hook up earlier as opposed to later, since most people do it to make the ball hook later down the lane. If in the case that the heads are dry, lofting it would get it over the dry heads and into some oil, preserving rotation and energy, and getting the ball to hook more in the backend. (Not talking a lot of loft either, like a foot or two.) This is why the pro's are so good, they understand all of this to a dot, and know how to make different adjustments at the right time. What happens in the front half of the lane can be just as important as the back half. That's my take.

I can add to this that I can never recall running into carry down on any house shot I have played. I didn't hit my target near enough in the PBA league to know what affect the lanes had on my bad shots, but I never noticed any influence of carrydown on my good ones in that league either. Maybe a small amount of carrydown does make it to the back of the lane - even in the article, Slowinski noted that there was 1 or 2 units of oil past the end of the pattern. That doesn't mean it has a noticeable effect on ball reaction.

I read this thread yesterday and coincidently encountered a heavy carrydown condition during league last night. Usually I have to gradually move left (Righty) as the lanes dry-up, but last night was the first time I had to move right because the carrydown worsened as we played. I ended-up six or seven boards to right from where I started in the first game. My strongest ball (Raw Anger) would make its move from the breakpoint (I was shooting around board 8)and not finish once it hit the carrydown which left wash-outs,etc from light hits. I think the carrydown was a result of a flood of oil in the center of the xmas tree pattern which was freshly put down just before we started.


Some people did well, but some did not like myself. I knew what was going on and tried to adjusted but sometimes the condition made the ball unpredictable. I struggled all night for a 507 series because I couldn't string strikes together to compensate for missed spares/splits.