Pushers and the ‘Shuffleboard’ Delivery

Lawn bowling grips can be divided into two categories. Those in the first category allow a person to hold a lawn bowl with arm and fingers of that hand pointed straight down.  These are all variants of the ‘claw’ between thumb and fingers. The second category of grip uses gravity to hold the bowl on top of some variant of a palm/fingers combination. These are variations of the palm grip.

People who suffer from arthritis may not be able to use their thumb to secure a bowl. No variation of claw grip is possible for them. They have no choice but palm grips. If these bowlers are to have any backswing, they must bend their elbow as they draw their arm back so that the bowl is steady in the palm of their hand. Bowl and arm are then pushed forward to release the bowl just as is done pushing the disc in shuffleboard. In fact I am calling this a shuffleboard delivery. Because fingers must be under the bowl, the bowl quite literally rolls off the finger tips.  A variant of bowling arm ( the Ubi Launcher^TM MSV Sports) is designed based on the same type of delivery. With some claw grips the fingers are more nearly down the back of the bowl rather than under it. The majority of bowling arms have adopted a mimic of the claw grip with two prongs symmetrically behind the bowl and one retractable one gripping the bowl on the running surface in front.

 Another way to handle these limitation on hand flexibility and hand strength is to get rid of any backswing while still using the palm grip. The starting position for forward motion is the bowling arm more or less vertical with the bowl in the palm grip, and the wrist slightly cocked so the palm is more or less horizontal under the bowl. The thumb is either under or along the side of the bowl.  In this configuration, the person executing the shuffleboard delivery needs to take a relatively longer step forward to add more velocity for long jacks on slow greens. All the bowl’s energy must come from faster combined body/arm movement, because there is no potential energy providing extra speed from elevation of the bowl. In another variant the bowler starts with the advancing foot already completely out in front. This is the complete ‘pusher’s’ delivery.

When the fingers are under the bowl the delivery seems to be much more sensitive to the location of the index finger on the running surface. When the fingers are more behind the bowl when it is released onto the carpet finger position seems to be of lesser importance.

Because these ‘shuffleboard’ bowlers need to accelerate their arm motion so much to get the required bowl velocity, they have an increased tendency to release the bowl too far in front of their advancing foot. This causes frequent narrow bowls for long jacks on slower greens.