Announcement of the previous free throw study
It's interesting to speculate on what the mechanism might be, though it's difficult to measure the causal relationship among factors. Bowling and free throws have the attractive feature of nearly constant (or slowly varying) environmental conditions. The lane conditions should evolve only very slowly, so I speculate that the parameters of the ball's release almost entirely determine the outcome. Perhaps there is some notion of instantaneous muscle memory? Perhaps there is some repeatability in nervous impulses, i.e. consecutive impulses are correlated? I don't know enough about physiology to offer any meaningful insights. It is a fascinating study, but I imagine that the effect is miniscule enough that i.i.d. modeling for bowling shots is an excellent approximation.
I guess it's important to do well on the first shots of a bowling sequence. A bad first control in orienteering has a considerably worse consequence, though.