Choosing Your Bowl Size; Different Advice

When I started lawn bowling in May 2012, I followed the standard advice. If I could touch both my two index fingers and my two thumbs together at the same time while encircling the running surface of the bowl, it was not too big for me. Following this advice I started with a number 4 Vector VS made by Taylor. (Such bowls are the best value/price delivered in Canada  and ordered on-line.)

Now after two years of experience, my own suggestion is different. Nonetheless, there is nothing wrong with this standard advice, if you are just going to be a social bowler who never tries anything but a draw shot. If, however, there is the slightest chance that you are going to get hooked on this game and become serious and competitive, your bowl size should be the one which you can hold firmly when you are holding the bowl with your hand inverted (thumb towards the ground) using the grip you will employ for a drive shot. (It is not necessarily comfortably holding the bowl this way; you will feel a strain from the weight of the bowl but you should be able to hold it 15 seconds without falling. The reason for this requirement is that the drive shot requires a substantial backswing. At the high point in that backswing you will be holding your bowl in your drive grip with your thumb underneath the bowl. It is at this point that you are most likely to lose your grip on the bowl.

I have found that if I use the next smaller size to what I would have chosen using the conventional test (in my case a number 3 instead of a number 4 bowl), my hold on the bowl even during a drive is  more secure.  I have never heard this advice anywhere but that is what works for me!