An often overlooked and very important component in every-one’s game is eye dominance.
Your dominant eye can affect what you see and how you see it. You must know your
dominant eye and understand its impact and why it is important.
If you don’t know your dominant eye, here’s how to determine it.
Hold your arms out in front of you with the palm of the hands facing away from you.
Touch the index fingers together and overlap the thumbs so that a triangle is
created between the two parts of the hands that are touching. Keep the hands at
arms’ length and, with both eyes open, put something 10 or 12 feet or even farther
away from you in that triangle. Don’t cheat and look at whatever you have chosen
with one eye or the other. Do it with both eyes open.
Close the left eye and then open it. Then close the right eye and open it.
When one of your eyes was closed, whatever you were looking at disappeared
from the triangle. That is your dominant eye. Some people think that if what
they are looking at doesn’t move, that is the dominant eye. Not. Think of it this way:
if you close the eye that is dominant, its dominance will be negated.
That’s why it’s dominant! (As an interesting aside, a right eye dominant right-hander
will perceive the object as having disappeared behind the left hand and a left eye
dominant right-hander will perceive the pins as having disappeared behind the right hand!)
Most right-handers are right eye dominant. The necessity of the triangulation of the
target, the eye, and the shoulder (the ball) can cause a miss of the target of about
two boards left. For some people it has no effect. The important thing is that you
know whether it affects your accuracy or not. If it does, merely change your targeting.
If you want to hit 10, you merely look at 8.
Some right-handers are left eye dominant. Left eye dominance in a right-hander
usually causes a miss left of three or four boards (sometimes more).
Want to hit 10? Look at 6. The variance in the miss is caused by how far the eye
is from the target. What a left eye dominant right-hander sees with is pretty far from
the bowling shoulder!
Eye dominance is common to most of the population. Regardless of which eye is
dominant, it is possible you will be able to look directly at what you want to hit.
However, if you are missing left, this simple, non-threatening explanation can be
a lifesaver.
Keep in mind that it is not only possible but also likely that you may miss what you
are looking at in different amounts in different parts of the lane. For instance, you
may need to look two to the right when playing 10 or out, look at what you want to
hit when playing 11 to 16, and go back to looking to the right to play inside of 17.
This is not a problem unless you don’t know it.
You can use tape to mark the lane for this exercise. Place one each on the 6th and 9th
boards for instance. If you look between them and hit the one on the 9th board, you
likely will need to look to the right of what you intend to hit when playing this area
of the lane. Continue to move the tape across the lane until you have defined your
tendencies in all the areas of the lane. This will be invaluable in helping you hit what
you intend to hit regardless of where you need to look to do so. Accuracy plays a
critical role in our sport and how to properly choose a target is important. This is also
important to the mental game.
This exercise will help you learn how to line up, how to deal with the reality of the
lane vs. the perception of the lane, and point out the importance of a precise stance
to eliminate misalignment as a cause for inaccuracy. This should help you make sure
that if, by some miracle, you miss, it won’t be because you didn’t line up right!