Lawn Bowl Delivery Instruction at Turramurra

This novice bowler has taken advantage of staying for the winter, within 500 meters of the Turramurra Lawn Bowling Club, in Sydney Australia to receive coaching on my bowling delivery.

My First Lesson

The most fundamental recommended change was not to crouch at the beginning of delivery but to stand with my legs straight but with my trunk slightly bent forward at the waist. This will pay off, it was explained to me, not so much now when I am still quite physically fit, but as I grow older, when I will not need to change my delivery to take into consideration increasing infirmities. Starting the delivery without crouching is the least stressful style.

A second significant observation of the coach was that too often my nonbowling arm ends up out in the air rather than resting consistently on the knee of the advancing leg. So now, for a non-crouch delivery, the non-bowling hand starts out with the fingers resting lightly at about the bottom of my pocket on the thigh of the leg that will step forward and ends up resting lightly on the knee of that forward leg.

The third significant change relates to the placement of my feet before delivery. Instead of standing with feet essentially together, it was advocated that my advancing foot should begin one-half a shoe length forward of my anchor foot. When I tried this combined with an upright starting stance, I  found that this caused almost all my weight to remain on my anchor foot throughout the delivery, automatically, while before I had to make a conscious effort to keep my weight predominantly on this foot; thus, this new modification again simplified my delivery.

I had seen in bowling videos on U-tube that many top bowlers tuck the knee of their anchor leg in behind the heel of their advancing leg when they deliver. I was not finding this necessary and so I asked the coach why this happened. He explained that I was not doing it because I was stepping forward parallel to the aim line rather than stepping more towards the aim line; that is directly in front of my anchor foot. If I were to step more towards the aim line according to theory my eyes would be directly over the aim line and I would improve the proportion of bowls passing cleanly through my stare point.

My Second Lesson 

I had the good fortune to have another lesson from a different teacher, Geoff Hamilton, who is the club champion and the CEO of the Turramurra Lawn Bowling Club. In my second lesson, my instructor said that he had been watching me practicing in a roll-up. His main concern was that I was still in too much of a crouch. He wanted me to stand up straight when I stepped onto the mat with my feet positioned as previously described but with a slight flexing of the knees and the weight on the balls of my feet so that I inclined slightly forward. (I will continue to try to keep most of my weight on my anchor foot.) He again emphasized that the goal was to have a delivery that would not need to change as I aged and acquired more aches and pains.

His next criticism was that after releasing the bowl I stepped back onto the mat rather than continuing to move my weight forward with the shot. He said that I should instead draw up my anchor foot so that I would end up standing with both feet out in front of the mat. He stated emphatically that on fast greens consistent weight transfer would be essential for controlling the momentum and hence length of my shots.

The third criticism was that I was flailing in the air with my free hand rather than sliding it down to rest on my advancing knee. After the bowl was released and traveling down the rink was the time to check (i) whether my delivering arm was raised no higher than my advancing knee (ii) that my anchor knee was just behind my advancing foot and (iii) that my non-bowling hand was resting on my knee. Even so, the number one job, once the bowl was released, was to notice whether the stare point was being hit and if not by how much and in which direction the miss occurred so it could be correlated with the final bowl position.