One Cannot Use Only Elevation to Power Your Bowl to Long Jacks on Healthy Well-Watered Grass

My home bowling club is James Gardens, Toronto, Canada. We have just 8 rinks with an outdoor synthetic sand-packed carpet. I bowl most frequently at this club because it is within a ten minute walk of my retirement condominium and I can see whether the green is playable from my 18^th floor balcony.

Playing mostly on this surface I developed my delivery during these last two seasons. For the shortest jacks, I simply push my bowl out with no backswing whatever. In this situation my bowling arm starts hanging exactly vertical. All the energy supplied to the bowl comes from an arm push out and from my body’s momentum as I step a medium step length forward. For the longest jacks, a backswing of 45 degrees from the vertical combined with the same medium step forward takes the bowl rather consistently to 2 meters from the front ditch. For intermediate lengths I adjust my backswing. This was all and good as far as it went.  

On Saturday July 27^th, I participated in the 2^nd Annual Tournament of Champions, which is sponsored by The Richard Bruton Wealth Management Group, and to which the winners from other feeder tournaments in different localities around Ontario are invited. My take home lesson, offered to me by one of many kind opponents, and reinforced by the loss of my three matches, was that depending upon elevation of the bowl, as I was doing, to provide most of the power needed to deliver, either short or long, on healthy natural grass does not consistently prvide sufficient control to compete at this more skilled level. One needs to have a very controlled backswing passing precisely back along one’s aim line and ending at a consistent height off the grass, followed by a variable muscle-derived acceleration of the bowl commensurate with the distance to the jack.

So back to the green to teach my muscles the appropriate lessons!