P1
But you need to show him your style of play, and what conditions
do you want the ball to be played under. Usually, the first ball he
drills for you is not up to expectations. But it gets better and
better with every ball.
I think the above can be said of [b[all[/b] drillers. Btw, the
"triangle" is always between the PAP, CG and pin of a ball. CG is
not even that important these days. Pin and PAP distance is the
lion's share of the ball reaction equation, all things being
equal.
Airgrinder
I don't think it is too wise to keep changing drillers for the
reasons which you quote. For instance, when your ring finger was
stretched you should have gone back to him and worked the problem
out after explaining to him.
Folks, there're a few things to getting a driller:
1. No one driller works for everyone. It is important to have
chemistry with the person who translates what you want to what you
get. This is simple to understand.
2. You have to discuss what you want and what to do to accomplish
those objectives. And i don't mean objectives like, "more hook" or
"hook later". You don't have to be a technical guru to describe
what you want. Here are some examples of things you can work out
together - where you want the weight of the ball to sit in your
palm, how much slack do you want on your span, et cetera.
3. Ball drilling is an art. Unless you are buying a ball with a
very complex asymmetrical core design, you can pretty much throw
the drill sheet away. And forget about how many inches your CG is
from the PAP or how large is your balance hole or stuff like
that.
All these are numbers. Statistics. They are for reference and hold
true only for a ball at
rest. Once you throw a ball, dynamic weight takes over the
static weights. And good ball drillers know that there is no way in
heaven any machine can even measure dynamic weight as it changes.
If you are at a driller who is obsessed with static weights, you
better move on.
This means that your driller is trying to match what you
tell him to what you want. It is guesswork at best. That
means the bowler and the driller must both discuss solutions.
Nobody gets it right first time.
All this means a good ball layout comes from committed and accurate
feedback on the bowler's part (since the good drillers are asking
anyway). More often than not, it's the bowler who supplies bad
input to the driller before blaming the driller.
P.S., I made a minor adjustment to the way i throw the ball two
years ago. That meant my grip was no longer the way it was. To get
the best possible feel, i used an old ball to plug, drill, and
re-plug to experiment with different layouts. During that time, I
spent up to three hours during every re-plug session inside
Walter's shop doing nothing but discussing what changes to try
next. And we're talking about changes the size of one-eighth of an
inch per time. (Like everything in bowling, make changes
one-at-a-time to find out which one works). We drew diagrams,
discussed my hand's idiosyncracies and played with pitches, et
cetera. And we didn't even talk about ball weight layouts because
that changes with different balls.
5 layouts later, I found the layout that I am still using till this
day. And all my balls have since been re-laid with it. 
