Divots

In bowls, a divot is a hole in the lightly rooted grass playing surface. Divots characteristically are found at two places. One is immediately at the front of the mat and is caused by dropping the bowl from a few inches to high  during an otherwise good delivery. The other more egregious type arises from a longer throw (not a roll)that bounces about 3 feet out from the front edge of the mat.  Because, in each case, the bowl is not rolling when it hits the green, both damage the playing surface by dragging at it as they slide as they pick up angular momentum. 

All people who release their bowls more than a few inches above the grass surface can make divots but for releases from the same height those who use some variant of the claw grip, with the thumb on the top of the bowl, tend to do more damage than someone who palms the bowl and rolls it off their fingertips. This is because the latter technique provides some rotation as the bowls are released. Tupper even advocates changing to a palm grip in wet weather to protect the green.

Players have different responsibilities for preventing divots. The lead is in charge of placing the mat. Besides the strategic importance of moving the mat up or back to change weight and line, leads are expected to also move the mat as necessary to provide a smooth landing place for the bowls. It is skips’ responsible to order that ground sheets be used if the green is suffering repeatedly damage. 

April Without Bowls

In 1922 T. S. Eliot wrote in his poem The Waste Land, “APRIL is the cruelest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.” April is certainly the cruelest month for Canadian lawn bowlers, such as myself, who have returned from someplace warmer where they could bowl, only to find that again winter is prolonged, the snow has not gone, and temperatures persist around zero Centigrade. My wife Tish and I spent January, February and March in the Algarve (southern Portugal) but had to leave because our landlord there wanted to make use of the condo at Easter and thereafter. The day we got back to Canada was reasonable weather and there was no trace of snow in Toronto but subsequent days have reversed that. If the temperature would only rise another ten degrees, the snow would be melted and the air temperature would be such that I could practice on the synthetic surface at James Gardens. My wife is giving me new bowls this year. I am getting Aeros: 3.5 Heavy Solar Flare Sonics with the Z scoop grip. These are perfected for  rougher, heavier grass greens like we so often encounter in Canada. I will continue to use my black 4.0 Heavy Taylor Vector VS bowls for fast synthetic surfaces like James Gardens and perhaps when leading. I was asked to play skip quite a bit at both Valverde and Vilamoura LBCs over the winter. In Portugal many fewer players have coloured bowls which makes it much slower to read the head in triples and fours. These Solar Flare bowls are yellow with red flecks so I won’t be contributing to the problem at least here in Canada.