Even More Improvements in Delivery Accuracy by Starting the Bowl Delivery More Slowly

I am a second year novice lawn bowler that has practiced and played most often on a fast synthetic outdoor carpet. My home club is James Gardens in Toronto Canada. Less frequently, I practice on natural grass at the Willowdale Lawn Bowling Club in North York. Almost all my tournament matches are played on grass since it is the overwhelmingly most common surface in the region.

My performance in practice and in tournaments on grass is unmistakably inferior to my play on the synthetic surface. At first, I thought it was just unfamiliarity with the surface, but even during a practice session on grass my delivery seemed to remain haphazard and my bad bowls random even after practicing for ½ hour.

Yet finally, by making one change, I was able almost instantly to start bunching my bowls closely around the jack, when only minutes before a comparable set were disposed over a rather wide area around it.   I slowed down my delivery. I drew back the bowl in the backswing very gradually. I then stepped forward smartly just before or as the backswing is complete and planted my advancing foot firmly. Then, and only then, did I swing forward towards my stare point and follow through.

Why was this timing problem showing up so much more seriously on grass than on the synthetic carpet? I think because, recognizing that I needed to deliver the bowl with more power, I was speeding up not just the forward motion of my arm but the entire delivery sequence and this caused me to start my forward swing before my advancing foot was firmly planted. Even my backswing was being sped up making the elevation of the bowl more in error.

It seems every action in the delivery, whether on a fast synthetic surface or on slow grass, needs to be identical right up until the start of the forward swing and this applies most particularly to the timing!

  Using this insight I contributed something when my triples team won two of three in the last open tournament of the Canadian season. We even got some money!