From four years’ personal experience, and after listening to others, this is my
consensus judgment. Narrow bowls are a poor choice on slow, or uneven greens,
or where windy conditions are common. Narrow bowls are a poor choice for
novices because they are less forgiving of the wobble before we achieve a
grooved delivery. For novice bowlers playing on fast greens, I feel the
decision between wide and narrow bowls is more of a toss-up.
These conclusions seem to follow from the following.
Narrow bowls reduce the amount of bias error on the draw shots but narrow bowls
require more careful weight control.
Narrow bowls make it more difficult to draw around bowls
(but they can go under them). Weighted shots can be played with less weight. The
bowl that comes in narrow is more likely to stay behind the kitty.
Often narrow bowls play quite well in the morning but poorly
in the afternoon because the wind usually increases in the afternoon and tilts
narrow bowls. Also, by then many tracking marks have been left on the rink by bowls
from the morning play. These marks are crossed at a more acute angle by narrow
bowls and consequently are pulled offline more easily.
The raised seams of an artificial surface can interact with a narrow or wide
bowl, more or less, depending upon the direction of the seam. If the seams are
parallel to the rink boundaries wide bias is likely better, while if the seams
run perpendicular to the rink boundaries, narrow bias bowls are likely better.
When the seams run diagonally, each rink will display preferences dependent
upon the location of the jack and mat with respect to the seams.
It's the green’s condition and the tilt angle of the bowl that
give different bias percentage to different deliveries of narrow bowls. Tilt
angle, wobble, green quality, grass type, and especially wind have an effect on
this bias-subtraction bowl type. If you lay down bowls with wobble, wide bias
bowls are more forgiving.
Narrow bowls allow for a flat, weighted shot to hit a target
bowl square at lower velocity than with a wider bias bowl, but since novice
leads are not often required to deliver run-through shots this advantage is
minimal for them.
A bowler can get a stronger bias bowl to hold a tighter
line, but cannot make a straighter wood pull more.
A swinging bowl is fine for smashing into heads because a
wider bias bowl is straighter than a narrow bowl at higher speeds but hooks
more at the end of its travel. The traditional bowl has the classic hockey
stick shape to its delivery arc.
