Good Habits that haven’t become Second Nature can Break Down under Pressure

My partners are in this picture from another club and another day

This past Sunday I was privileged to play in the Leaside Lawn Bowling Club’s mixed triples tournament here in Toronto Canada. I have very self-sacrificing partners (my bowling coach and her husband) who seem to set aside their own prospects of winning in order to provide me with the maximum in learning opportunities. In the first two of the three games, I played skip and learned a valuable lesson: What makes being skip difficult is not just the shots that are required but the pressure of knowing that those shots determine the score for the team. Apparently, it is one thing to know what to do and to execute it properly when the pressure is moderate but when those actions have not become second nature, performance breaks down under pressure. After the second game, we called the experiment complete. I reverted to being a passably competent lead and we won our last match with everyone bowling better.

The second element besides psychological pressure, a combination of factors really, that causes a breakdown from proper form is long jacks on heavy greens. The natural inclination in this situation is to throw more energetically; but this is wrong, I think. One does not throw harder one simply elevates the bowl more in the backswing before getting down to grass the bowl. The increased energy as the bowl falls further towards the ground in your swing supplies the extra power needed. If I try to throw harder, my timing is affected and I find my arm swinging forward before I have stepped forward and before I have firmly planted that forward foot. When that happens I cannot roll the bowl over my aiming point and it travels-well, elsewhere!  That certainly is what happened too often on Sunday last.