Head Reading at Lawn Bowls Using Motifs

The labelled boxes enclosed by the dashed lines are the motifs

Here is a lawn bowls head to illustrate the motif method of analysis. The mat is situated at the bottom of the diagram. The bowls with crosses belong to the opposition. The plain bowls are yours. Your skip has the last bowl left to play. The little yellow circle is, of course, the jack. You are down one in the head.

The motif analysis is illustrated in the diagram above.

A.   A jack high wing bowl can sometimes improve probable outcomes of a draw from the same side; however, in this case it is disfavored because of the risk that you might touch the standing bowl in Motif C. Even a slight touch on the opposition’s C bowl will roll it closer to the jack. Of course this will not put you further down. It is already shot bowl.

B.   A double takeout motif often presents a pocket for an overweight draw that can push two bowls and allow the delivered bowl to slide through to the jack. The difficulty here is that one of this pair is a standing bowl that will roll closer to the jack rather than being knocked out!

C.   A standing bowl is the opposing shot bowl. As already discussed any touch on it, directly or indirectly, will not take it away from the jack but closer.

D.   Another double takeout possibility. The risk of removing your own second shot to put your side down a multiple rules out a heavier shot of this kind.

E.  Your side has the backest bowl. Any backward movement of the jack can favor your side.

F.   This is the plant motif. Here, it is very favorable for the white side. If the crossed bowl in F is hit either directly or indirectly, your side’s bowl touching it will be propelled towards the jack. If it moves just a bit it will become shot. If it moves more and moves the jack back in the space between your 'backest bowl' (E) and your wing bowl (A), you will gain a multiple. A draw aiming to run through the crossed bowl in Motif F with a couple of feet of weight is the highest percentage shot. If you hit the crossed bowl in F, no matter what weight, your own bowl in the motif will move towards the jack. If your delivery is a bit narrow you can still rattle through between the opposing bowls on this right side of the green while still jolting your bowl in the F motif. If you are a bit wide you may end up with a rest on your 'backest bowl' (E), again making shot. If you are wide and a tad short you could just draw shot!

Soon to Decamp for Portugal

James Gardens LBC Toronto in Seasonal Colours

For the third winter in a row, my wife and I will fly out of Canada New Years Eve to spend the first three months of 2018 in the Portugal’s Algarve region. There we can avoid ice and snow while continuing to bowl outdoors.

Even though our location in Vilamoura is not as convenient for bowls after the Vilamoura Lawn Bowling Club closed in October 2016, we still play at Valverde LBC in Almancil, where we have very kindly been accepted as members. We also discovered last year that there are 4 bowls rinks at the Balaia Golf Resort, close to Quarteira, that are open to play for visitors. We will also give them a try this coming year since this facility is open on Tuesdays when Valverde is closed for green maintenance.

Apparently there is another close bowls green at the Praia da Oura resort in Quarteira. I have never been there. Some on-line posts seem to suggest it is quite run down. Others suggest that it is only open in the winter. Pictures show a location close to the ocean so it may be quite windy. The surface is carpet.

I have described already the many reasons lawn bowlers might prefer to go to the Algarve for the winter months. 

Head Reading at Lawn Bowls: The 'Standing Bowl' Motif

 

The bowl at the left is a 'Standing Bowl'

A ‘standing bowl’ is a lawn bowl that continues to stay upright on its running surface after it has come to rest. A standing bowl is significant because it can be much more easily moved further along its path if struck by a later bowl. A much harder hit is required to roll over a bowl that has already fallen over. For example, it is much easier to promote a short 'standing bowl' than the kind that have fallen down at the end of its travel. Consequently, such a bowl, which is superficially quite short, can be promoted to being a shot bowl.

 Also, according to Mr. Tupper who writes an interesting lawn bowls blog, “A ‘standing bowl’ which is in contact with another bowl will bounce to the jack with little or no effort and does not depend upon using the same delivery line as it was delivered. Actually, a reverse delivery wick, coming from the opposite hand to wick to the jack; will cause a double point. It and the bowl used for the wick.  Yes both will go to the jack with equal speed. (Draw about 4 feet through) for this wick raise.”

Incidentally, a disproportionately large number of standing bowls is a sign of a slow green. A bowl is held up by longer grass blades because the bowl sinks into the carpet. A fast green is more like a bare surface with no protruding grass blades to support an upright bowl.

Head Reading at Lawn Bowls: The Jack-High Wing Bowl Motif

I am proposing the term 'motif' to identify any common, significant feature in a lawn bowls head. Identifying the motifs found in any lawn bowls head along with an understanding of their significance for the selection of your tactics for that head will be my approach to lawn bowling head analysis.

 Before I can analyze a head in this way, I must identify all the useful motifs. Other motifs can be found by searching 'motifs' with the search tool at the top of this blog.

A common motif is the ‘jack-high wing bowl motif.’ This consists of the jack and an opposition bowl, approximately jack-high, separated from it by 2-3 feet. This motif's presence in a head should suggest as one possibility a potential draw shot, targeting the jack, delivered from the same side as the jack-high bowl. The chance for a successful outcome in this configuration is more than for a draw to a bare jack because the delivered bowl will sometimes wick off the inside of the prepositioned jack-high bowl and end up rolling closer to the jack. Because in this circumstance an overly heavy delivery may be buffered and corrected by its encounter with the jack-high bowl, the demands on the delivery are more forgiving and a favorable outcome is more likely. Any excess weight may fortuitously be expended pushing the original jack-high bowl further from the jack.

Of course, the positions of other bowls in the head may increase or decrease the likelihood of success using this motif. Any head may exhibit quite a few different motifs, and each may adumbrate a different shot. The skip’s job is to choose the best option from among those suggested.  

Head Reading at lawn Bowls: ‘Chop/Tap and Lie’ Motif

A motif is defined as a main element, idea, feature, etc. The main cultural areas where the word is used are art, literature, and music. I am going to extend the term to identify any common, significant feature in a lawn bowls head. Enumerating the motifs displayed in any lawn bowls head along with an understanding of their significance for the selection of your tactics for that head will be my approach to lawn bowls head analysis.

Below, I identify what I call the ‘Chop/Tap and Lie’ Motif. For other bowling motifs, search the word motif in this blog’s search tool.

A head position may comprise the ‘shot or bowl’ motif but be further complicated by having the jack ‘covered’ by another bowl in front of it. That is to say, the full target cross-section is not available because the jack is obscured by another shorter bowl.  In this situation, another possibility may be the ‘chop and lie’ or ‘tap and lie’ tactic. This delivery is less promising than the ‘shot or bowl’ precisely because it is a one-bowl target. Nevertheless, it may be the only option available when the head is obstructed.

A necessary precondition must be that, so long as your bowl succeeds in coming to rest on the target bowl, it will be the closest one to the jack. This usually means that the target bowl must be behind the jack.

Head Reading at Bowls: The Re-Spot Position Motif

Usually, the more counting bowls your side has in the head, the wider the target that these bowls will make. Also, the shorter the distance between the jack and the mat the more likely your opposition is to attack the head with weight. More weight increases the likelihood that the jack will be driven out of bounds. In the 'old' tradition, such dead ends were called 'burnt' and were completely replayed but increasingly today the end continues with the jack placed in a predesignated re-spot position.  The most common re-spot position for club play is located on the center line two meters from the front ditch. 
When the head position  strongly suggests that your  opponent may drive and succeed in breaking up the head, you have two main choices:

(1) try to position a short blocking bowl or 
(2) deliver the 'backest bowl' closest to both the re-spot position and the forward ditch. 

If your side is sitting with more than two shot bowls, the blocker is the best choice if you must save them all these shots. Otherwise, drawing a catcher bowl that covers the re-spot position is easier and more likely to affect the outcome. This latter tactic has the added advantage that you are unlikely to accidentally disrupt the head yourself.

Thinking about covering should be triggered whenever your side has two close shot bowls. 

Lawn Bowling Tactics; Moving the Ground Sheet- Moving the Mat

At some lawn bowling clubs in Canada, groundsheets are permanently put down at the mat end of the rink except for special championship matches. The Etobicoke Lawn Bowling Club, one of the clubs to which I belong, is one of these. I understand how this protects the greens and avoids embarrassment for those bowlers who would otherwise make regular divots in the surface. It is not too heavy a price to pay. It respects the diligent work of the volunteer greens tenders.

It should not, however, discourage skips who believe that a strategic advantage can be had by moving the mat. There is a rule that the front edge of the mat must slightly overlap the back edge of the groundsheet, meaning that mat and groundsheet must move together. In Canada, because groundsheets are not just put down when it is necessary to protect particular damaged areas of the rink, there is a national rule that groundsheets may be moved, without the greenskeeper’s permission, up and down the green as required to position it-- so that the mat will go where the skip who controls the mat wants it. 

Nevertheless, the inconvenience of moving both groundsheet and mat before starting every end is a real disincentive to adopting this tactic. It should not be. It is not necessary to move mat and groundsheet a big distance to obtain a benefit from this tactic. Just moving them together one or two mat lengths forward will change the path the bowl follows. Furthermore, by making this change your side is asserting itself, taking charge of the end, and increasing respect for your team vis-a-vis ordinary social bowlers. If the opposition wonders aloud whether what you are doing is legal, all the better. Whatever authority is in charge will confirm your right in the matter. If there is a referee invite the objectors to consult him or her.

When the end is finished, do not offer to move the groundsheet back to the two-meter mark. Leave it to the skips to decide; besides, you expect to win the next end and use the same mat position in the one subsequent as you continue to win ends!

Many skips are accustomed to playing over the groundsheet at the head end of the rink. Other skips will want to take up this groundsheet and then relay it when the end is complete. Accommodate the opposing skip in whatever suits him or her.

 It is not a requirement to pick up the groundsheet at the skips' end of the rink simply because the jack is being delivered past it and closer to the forward ditch. In fact, this is routinely accepted when the groundsheet is in its standard location and the jack has been rolled to within 2 meters of the forward ditch even though it is this configuration that most often causes visible interference with good draws to the jack. If the groundsheet at the skips' end is up nearer the hog line and the jack has been delivered long there is actually less chance of groundsheet contact with a normal draw shot. Nevertheless, many opposing skips will want to take the groundsheet up in this situation. If it makes them more comfortable, I suggest that you readily agree to this also.

When moving the groundsheet up the rink it may be useful to mark where its corners sit with chalk. This way returning the groundsheet to the same location will be simplified for subsequent ends. But even if you don't do this, remember that it is not actually necessary that the groundsheet be either completely straight or perfectly centered so long as the mat itself is properly centered with respect to the rink's center-line. 

Those club players who play open tournaments infrequently, typically bowl varying-length jacks all from a mat at the T.  For some reason, it is my experience that women club bowlers are the most easily disturbed by mat/groundsheet movement. To give your team the greatest legal advantage you should choose any configuration different from the one with which they are most comfortable. Don't let groundsheets take away this valuable tactic that is totally within the rules.

A Strategy for Playing Triples at Lawn Bowls

In order to win an end of lawn bowls a head must be built that will provide a chance for the skip to convert the head with his/her last bowl if the side is down. For the skip to be down multiple bowls in the head with no realistic way to change it is anathema.

Lead’s Play

In order to protect against this situation the lead should deliver no short bowls! Trying to assure that all lead bowls are behind the jack is more important than gaining shot. The next most important object is to have at least one good second. The lead’s first bowl in the end must therefore be delivered with the greatest margin for error. If necessary it can be aimed to end up 1-2 meters behind the jack just to be sure that it is not short.

Vice’s Play

With most strategies it is the lead who can afford to play with the bowls with the least bias. According to my personal view it is the vice that needs the narrowest bowls. The role of my vice is: first, to place bowls behind or next to the jack and obtain a good second, if the lead has failed in these objectives; then, secondarily: if the lead has met these objectives, the vice should try to rest bowls on whichever bowls are closest behind the jack, no matter which team has these bowls. Bowls resting on other bowls already behind the jack will necessarily beat the bowls they rest against. Moreover, a bowl touching a bowl behind is locked in position and usually cannot be driven out. Delivering such  a chop-and-lie or resting bowl is most easily done when the delivery path is as straight as possible. This is why my vice’s bowls should be low bias. So long as the lead has kept bowls behind the jack, narrow bowls should still be able to find some clear route into the head.

If the opponents are lying shot and there are two or more bowls blocking the front of the head my vice will often be called on to play a weighted shot to clear out blocking bowls in keeping with the overall strategic objective of giving the skip a high probability path to the jack.

Skip’s Play

The skip should use large, heavy, wide-drawing bowls. These bowls are what  may be required to draw around blocking bowls, draw close to the re-spot position at the back, trail the jack, or drive the jack out of bounds. If the opponents have the last bowl and are up bowls in the head before your side’s last bowl, as skip I must  not only try to convert the head but must place that bowl where it is dangerous for the other side to try to drive it off. 

Henselite Supergrip Championship Bowls

By the middle of October most Canadian lawn bowling clubs have officially shut down. In Toronto, Etobicoke LBC which has two grass greens had its last games October 13^th.  Nearby, James Gardens LBC with just one synthetic carpeted green is officially closed but unofficially open for practice and self-organized games if you know the combination for the lock on the shed.

I have been comparing some of the bowls sets that I own with other bowls sets that have been donated to the club for the use by tyro players. In particular, I have looked at an old set of size 5 brown Henselite SuperGrip Championship bowls. Today, bowls bigger than Size 4 are unpopular at James Gardens compared to the heyday of lawn bowling.

In 1959, Henselite introduced an improved powder compound with a ‘Super Grip’ additive, designed to give the polymer bowl a better feel in the hand and provide bowlers with a better grip on the bowl.  Also, before 1960,  Henselite bowls were not machined with a dimple grip. Bowls with 'Super Grip’ were called the Henselite Championship model. The additive has remained a feature of all subsequent models. This particular bowls set was approved for use on South African greens (these bowls are marked S.A.B.A.) which can be particularly hard and so fast running because they can contain up to 30% clay.

These bowls when tried out clearly have more bias than my Vector VSs or Aero Sonics. The hard sand packed carpet at James Gardens runs 16-17 seconds and on the wide hand one’s aim point on the front bank can be as wide as the further boundary marker on the adjacent rink!  Nevertheless, I can show, by placing a plastic pylon at the shoulder of the bowl’s arc, that it only traverses a few feet into the neighboring rink. Although many bowls seem to threaten to disrupt the neighbor’s head the actual risk is very occasional and mostly threatens to hit unimportant wayward bowls and a very rare displaced jack.

In exchange for the annoyance of having players on the next rink blocking your aim point these bowls seem to offer more line stability than either of my favorite bowls sets. This can be expected to be particularly true when the wind is strong. Indentations on a lawn bowls surface can act like little windsocks. A bowl without grips, such as these Champion Supergrips, thus has reduced wind resistance and is less likely to be tilted by the wind. It is this tilting that seems to most substantially change the path of a bowl in the wind. Tilting is also more exaggerated the harder the bowling surface because the actual area of bowl surface in contact the playing field decreases the less the surface deforms with the weight of the bowl.  A bowl nestling in short grass is held more upright than the same bowl sitting on a thin synthetic carpet with no under-pad. The slower the green, the less bowls delivered on it are affected by wind.

A heavier bowl can also expect to be more stable in the wind. My Henselite weighs 4 ounces more than my Vector and about 3 ounces more than my Aero.

My plan is to use these Henselite Supergrips to play some matches at James Gardens next year. What I will be giving up is an enhanced chance to chop-and-lie on an opposing bowl. The less a bowl swings the easier it is to come to rest against a target bowl. This is not giving away too much because on a fast surface a draw-drive game is the better play of the percentages.

On 11-13 second grass rinks I will stick with my Aeros because a less biased bowl on a slower surface quite regularly helps one gain shot by resting on an opposition bowl whenever it is just behind the jack.  

After 6 Years Bowling: The Status of Weight Control

For more than five years, since I took up lawn bowls, I have been consciously trying to control the weight of my deliveries, based on the reported jack length. Such was my lack of confidence concerning my visual estimation of the length of the jack that I would ask my skip each end to call out to me how far past the hog line the jack was sitting. When I was skipping, I could be quiet. I had the advantage that I could pace off this distance on my way to the mat to deliver my bowls! When I delivered a bowl, I would consciously try to control the length of my back-swing in proportion with the distance to the jack. This is not best practice!!! It is just what I thought I had to do.  I didn’t believe I could depend upon the subconscious or the intuitive to help. Well the good news is: I was wrong. Even better news is: you don’t have to worry about it. So long as you take the time, standing on or just behind the mat to visualize the expected track of the bowl you are about to deliver, then, with experience, any attempt at conscious control of your arm speed will just fade away. If my experience has any generality, you will just one day say to yourself, “Gee, I’m not doing that anymore.” I still quite regularly ask how many meters the jack is past the hog line, but now it is just to give corroborating or more precise data to my subconscious control system. The caveat is the importance of imagining and visualizing, as best you can, the path of the bowl.

When One Hand has No Bias in Lawn Bowling

While skipping my team in an interclub match played on an end rink, I discovered that one hand had no bias at all. A bowl directed down the center line that normally would be expected to move from left to right stayed straight all the way. This occurs when the natural bias of the bowl is perfectly compensated by a slight uphill slope of the rink on that hand.

Usually I offer a team-mate playing lead the choice of which hand to bowl. My reasoning is that the bowler’s peace of mind regarding the shot to be played is usually more important than some slightly improved theoretical probability of success from one side or the other. In this case, for the first time in my life, I said, “I insist that you bowl this narrow side.”

If the path from mat to jack is straight, the first short bowl completely blocks that side of the rink. To give away to the opponents the first chance to bowl that side can shut that side down for you for the full end.

In my experience this odd situation  always arisen on an end rink and is accompanied by a very wide hand as the alternative (and also usually a very heterogeneous one).  

The Bowls Shot You Can Only Make on Slow Greens

Suppose you want to set a blocker against a normal draw shot. The minimum length you must deliver a bowl is 14 meters measured from the center front of the mat to the bowls location. The closer an intended blocker is to that 14 meters the more space it effectively protects; therefore, you most preferably want to deliver a block shot the minimum distance but still in the normal path of the opponent’s anticipated shot. At the same time, you do not want to risk sending your intended blocker out of bounds.

When the mat is set at two meters from the back ditch on a fast green you probably need an aim point at least as wide as the number on the adjacent rink, then  the optimal position for a blocker is very close to the side boundary and so it is too risky to attempt. (See the red line in the picture.)

In contrast, when the mat is set at two meters from the back ditch on a slow green where you need to choose an aim point no wider than the front side boundary marker, then there is little risk in delivering a bowl that is about 14 meters out and still in the path of your opponent’s anticipated draw shot (the green line).

This consideration does not apply to defending heavier run-through shots or drives. Because these aggressive shots are delivered with much narrower lines there is much less risk in setting short blockers against them. 

Avoiding Big Ends Against at Lawn Bowls

A bowls match is often lost because of one big end. Suppose you can foresee the onset of such an end; can you do something to mitigate it or reduce its probability?

I think you can. A big end against you occurs most often when:
Your lead bowls more than one short bowl
Your lead doesn’t get any bowls within 4 feet of the jack
You are shot but they have two or more seconds
You have no bowls in the head and your vice is erratic
What can you do? Stop your bowler when he or she steps on the mat with the stop sign. Signal that you need a bowl in the head. Signal for special concentration. Indicate the safer hand. The beauty of team bowls is that an indication of a critical situation is not a criticism of the bowler on the mat because it is not he or she that caused it. For this reason it does not increase anxiety it just urges more intense and better concentration and delivers better bowls when they are needed most.
What your side does not want to do is just leave it up to the skipper to get the side out of trouble. That is always possible but the solution needs to start before those last bowls.  

Good Line????

Soooo many times I’ve heard the opposing skip (in a club game) call out to the person on the mat, who has delivered a bowl such as in the picture above, “Great line just a bit more weight.” This is just wrong information! And, incredibly these people have played bowls for more than a few years! A bowl that stops in the pictured spot with respect to the jack has been delivered with too much grass (wide) and too little weight (velocity). So long as the rink is effectively flat, if the bowl were delivered with the correct weight and the same line it would end up at position Z in the picture. On the same flat rink, if the bowl were delivered with the same weight but the correct line it would end up at position X in the picture. To reach the jack the bowl pictured must be delivered somewhat narrower and somewhat heavier.

Consequently, every lawn bowl that you roll should send you back two pieces of information: what correction I need in weight and what correction I need in line. What makes lawn bowls such engineering marvels is that the correction you need to make in line does not alter the correction you need to make in weight. They are mutually independent.  A mathematician would say they are 'orthogonal'. In practice it means you can adjust your next delivery without a calculator- of course your muscles need to cooperate.

A Surprise Win

I’m not crowing. It was probably a fluke of nature; but, if my recounting of my bowls experience is going to be complete, I must note it. Playing mens’ pairs with the buddy who got me into bowls, we won an open provincial tournament!
 In the province of Ontario in Canada, the draw puts winners against winners so it is not possible to just get three easy opponents. So that doesn’t explain it. It was just a combination of simultaneous good play by both of us and a string of luck. However, the outcome was impressive. Since each match was just 12 ends, the maximum score was 18 with anything more just plus points yet our scores in the three successive matches were 18+4, 18+1 and 18+3!

As I have noted elsewhere, I have only played in a few open tournaments this year, because the pressure to perform well gives me butterflies. In fact this is just the second open tournament I have played in 2017 and this probable fluke is not going to change my decision. The important thing is to have fun and playing at my regular club level and practicing regularly gives me more peace of mind. I know that all the books say to compete against the best if you want to improve but apparently, this regime is good for me.

Proper Visualization of the Course of Your Lawn Bowl: the Final Secret to Controlling Weight

Barry Pickup says, “Study the track your bowl takes en route to the head. Learn that track, memorize it. Learn to visualize that track before you deliver a bowl. A properly delivered bowl will always follow the same track unless deflected by a foreign object or uneven green. Learn that track well and you are a long way towards bringing a bowl to rest exactly where you want it.”

Before a high-performance lawn bowler delivers a difficult shot, you will often see him or her standing about halfway down the rink looking at the head or walking backwards towards the mat. What is going on in that person’s mind?

I think after examining the head from near the forward ditch, the expert bowler has already made up his/her mind what shot to try. This close up looking from the direction of the mat most probably relates to the visualization of the shot. From the mat, the crucial details of the last few meters traveling of the bowl cannot be visualized. Often the bowl has already disappeared from view among the other bowls.

Before starting to roll your actual bowl, you should have rolled an imaginary bowl and followed it on its path all the way to its final resting place. It may seem like a waste of time. You may be put off because it seems no-one else is doing this. I resisted for five years! There is no obvious logic in it; but, it will improve your weight like nothing else will.

Head Reading at Lawn Bowls: The Entry Port Motif

An entry port on the right-hand side leading to the yellow jack: the rink runs from lower left to upper right

The chances for a successful draw to the jack are improved when the port configuration of bowls is present. A port is a funnel-shaped passage, ideally, that leads towards the jack at the same angle as the normal angle of draw of your bowl. The funnel shape is marked at two or more places by bowls so that if the delivery is either wide or narrow but a touch heavy it will be deflected back and funneled in the direction of the jack.

Ports are not visible from the mat. They need to be identified by the team member directing the head. Because it is the bowler who knows the bias of his own bowls best, the bowler often needs to be called to the head to confirm the wisdom of what is being proposed.

Head Reading at Lawn Bowls: The ‘Jack or Bowl’ Motif

The Motif Approach to Head Reading

To a pedantic person, a lawn bowl's head is an area encompassing all the bowls in play and the jack. Pragmatically, the head comprises all the bowls in play likely to be or become significant, the jack, and the rink area around them. To illustrate the difference: when your skip tells you to stay back of the head, he or she doesn't mean you need to be on the bank just because there are a few bowls, four meters behind the jack (though you should not stand in a way that would obscure them).

 A motif is defined as a main element, idea, feature, etc. The main cultural areas where the word is used are art, literature, and music. I am going to extend the term to identify any common, significant feature in a lawn bowl head. Enumerating the motifs displayed in any lawn bowling head along with an understanding of their significance for the selection of your tactics for that head will be my approach to lawn bowling head analysis.

 Before I can analyze a head in this way, I must identify each of the common motifs. I will start, in this blog, with the ‘jack or bowl’ motif and continue the examination in later blogs.

’Jack or Bowl’ Motif

I will define an approximately jack-high opposing bowl that is sitting shot, with 5.5 inches or less distance between it and the jack as the ’jack or bowl’ motif.

For us ordinary mortals, this arrangement of the jack and one bowl lying shot is unlikely to be defeated with draw bowls. However, because the distance between the jack and bowl is small enough that it is also unlikely that you can roll a bowl between them without disturbing one or both, an on-shot delivered at this target has a heightened chance to move either the jack, the opposing bowl, or both, because this target is substantially wider in cross-section than a jack or bowl sitting isolated.  Therefore aiming to hit this cluster has an improved chance for success.

The closer this space between the jack-high bowl and the jack is to the actual width of your own bowl when it is on its running surface, the sooner the attack should be considered because your opponents will realize that this setup presents a big opportunity for your side to get rid of their shot bowl and will try to alter the situation by placing receiving bowls at the back, blocking your planned on-shot, or tickling the jack into a more secure location. Nevertheless, in a pairs, triples, or fours game, hitting the jack or bowl motif is best left to the team player most experienced with run-through shots.  The most likely strategy of the side owning the shot bowl is to get other bowls behind the jack in a catching position or to cover any re-spot position(s).

When it is the opposing lead that creates the ‘shot or bowl’ situation, a good strategy is to direct your own lead to get one of his/her bowls into the head so that it widens the target. What is anathema in the situation is for your lead to be short blocking your subsequent drive or on-shot. If your lead has two bowls remaining when the ‘jack or bowl’ situation arises, first ask for a bowl 1-2 meters behind the jack and then ask for the next bowl jack-high to widen the target. The first bowl will help provide a better sense of the correct weight; the second will make use of this knowledge to set up the target for destruction.

How Many Lawn Bowls Matches are Won by Six Points or Less?

....Quite a large percentage, right! Well how many matches contain within them a six point conversion? ....Or two three point conversions?  What I am getting at is that a lot of matches swing on the skip making a few big shots with one of those final bowls.

My co-blogger, John McKinnie who writes Bowling for Gold, makes the point in a recent offering that some shots deserve more careful preparation than normal. Forget that some people, like Ryan Bester, bowl so fast that you would think he doesn't prepare at all. I am talking about mortals!

Particularly if the shot required is something other than a draw shot, I think one needs to really methodically go through a check-list in preparation; not to increase your nervousness or increase the tension but to settle oneself and make sure you have brought to mind everything you have learned.

I skipped a team that won a competition at James Gardens on Saturday. The difference we won by could be accounted for by last shot or second-last shot conversions. Among these, I scored on three out of four drives where we were down at least three in each head. Yes, I was also lucky in some of these outcomes, after lucky after I hit the head, but those successful shots ' gave our side a chance' in those ends.

The moral: practice those rescue shots and then take a few seconds to prepare before trying to performing them.

When Winning with it, Don’t deviate from your Lead’s ‘Natural Length’

This afternoon I played an in-house social game of pairs on grass at the Etobicoke Lawn Bowling Club. My lead was on fire. We had the mat most of the afternoon and I kept calling for a jack 23-24 meters in front of the mat placed at the T line(in Canada the hog line is at 21 meters!). This I gathered from her performance was my lead’s ‘natural length’ under the rink conditions that day. Besides bowling consistently, she delivered the jack dependably to the 23-24 meter length and, since we were doing wonderfully, I never changed anything throughout the match.

When the match was over I said to her in the clubhouse, “That length seems to be very comfortable for you.”

She astounded me by replying, “But I like to change it for variety.”

Bowls is challenging enough. Don’t do the opposition favors. If your side is out-bowling them at your lead’s natural distance, let them struggle to win an end so as to have a chance to change things. Then, you will get your variety. If your side is out-bowling the opposition with a certain mat position and jack length conditions, your success improves your confidence and, consequently,  further improves your bowling; at the same time, your success creates doubts in your opponents’ minds and damages their bowling.  

An Open Letter to New Bowlers after Open House

A Real Game

Last Saturday, I was one of the club coaches at the James Gardens Open House. I met quite a few new people who all could become pretty good bowlers. All seemed to enjoy it. They realized, “I can do this.”

But many, maybe most of them, I predict are going to quit after their first real game. Not because they can’t roll a bowl up close to that little white ball but because they haven’t learned the terminology, the etiquette, the hand signals, the team member responsibilities or the basic rules yet. And if they don’t learn these things before they try to play a real game with experienced club members, they are going to be embarrassed or even spoken to unkindly;( even though we try to prepare our members to look out for the ‘newbies’).

 That first day Open House instruction is intended to answer the question, “Could you play a reasonable game of bowls.”

We aren’t burdening beginners with all the rules and responsibilities stuff. That we save for the subsequent lessons. But if these tyro bowlers think they can learn the rest watching bowls on Youtube, they are on the way to problems. Top bowlers on the tube speak little (since it is usually singles). When it is a team game, they know their signals. There is a dashed line down the center of the rink to help center the mat. They have a special official to center the jack. The score is kept for them and they don’t need to rake bowls. All in all, no help for a prospective novice lead bowler.

So if new folk want to enjoy bowls, they need to learn the details; the non-physical stuff  That is what volunteer coaches teach in lessons after that first one. However, no matter what I write some people won’t come out for it. For them I have tried to write down a bit of this theory and practical stuff. I have augmented a Wikipedia article.

Lawn bowls is, almost always, played on a large, rectangular, precisely levelled and manicured grass or synthetic carpet surface known as a bowling green which is divided by imaginary lines into narrow parallel playing strips called rinks. The game can be played between two individuals or between teams of two to four. In the simplest competition, singles, one of the two opponents flips a coin to see who wins the "mat" and begins a segment of the competition (in bowling parlance, an "end"), by placing the mat and rolling the jack to the other end of the green to serve as a target. Once it has come to rest, the jack is aligned to the center of the rink and the players take turns to roll their bowls from the mat towards the jack. The object of the game is to finish each game segment or ‘end’ with bowls closer to the jack than the opposition

A bowl may curve outside the rink boundary into the rest of the green on its path, but must come to rest within the rink boundary to remain in play. At the front and back of the long narrow playing surface are ditches. Bowls delivered into the front ditch are dead and are removed from play, except in the event when one has "touched" the jack on its way. "Touchers" are marked with chalk and remain alive in play even though they are in the ditch. Similarly if the jack is knocked into the ditch it is still alive unless it is out of bounds to either side. When this happens at our club the jack is "respotted"on the center of the rink two meters from the front ditch and the end is continued. After the competitors have delivered all of their bowls (four each in singles and pairs, three each in triples, and two bowls each in fours), the distance of the closest bowls to the jack is determined (the jack may have been displaced) and a point, called a "shot", is awarded for each bowl which a competitor has closer than that opponent's bowl that is nearest to the jack. For instance, if a competitor has bowled two bowls closer to the jack than their opponent's nearest, they are awarded two shots. The exercise is then repeated for the next end, bowling back in the opposite direction on the rink. A game of bowls is typically a preset number of ends.

A new lawn bowler at James Gardens LBC will at first be a participant in a game between teams of three players each. The new bowler will deliver the first three bowls for his or her side. The team leader called the “skip” will ask the new bowler to try to deliver each bowl as close to the jack (the white ball) as possible. Once the lead has rolled three bowls (s)he has no further responsibilities in that ‘end’.until all the bowls have been delivered and the score on the end is determined.

Each player on the team has particular assignments to promote the flow of the game. Besides rolling three bowls, when his/her team has possession of the mat, the lead is required to both place the mat and center it, at whatever distance from the back ditch the skip decides, and then roll the jack to the length the skip calls for  At the completion of an end, if his/her team losses the end the lead rakes the bowls together behind and to the right of the new mat position. If his/her team has won the end, the winning lead immediately collects the jack and starts setting the mat for the next end.

If the new bowler bowls a bowl that is close to being out of bounds it is his/her job to signal to the skip whether that bowl is inside or outside the rink.

Open House in Canada: Bowls Advertising

It’s almost May and May is the month for Open Houses at the lawn bowling clubs in Canada. In May clubs offer the general public a chance to discover that lawn bowling is fun. What’s it like? It’s sort of alley bowling with sunshine. It’s sort of curling with grass instead of ice (and no sweeping!) It was a fascination for Francis Drake, historically, and hundreds of thousands of Australians, today.

It can keep you flexible and trim. Literally anyone can play. People in wheelchairs play. People who are legally blind play. If you have a bad back or bad knees, there is special equipment to help deliver the bowl. The best bowlers in the world are in their twenties and thirties but there are advantages to being short, stout and having big feet! (A firm foundation and low center of gravity are advantages.) There are advantages to being patient and tactical.

Finally it is environmentally green and financially affordable.

Any club will welcome new bowlers and lend them bowls to get started. Now is the season to invite friends and acquaintances to have as much enjoyment as you are having!

The decapitated man on the left is now minister of immigration The bowler is the soon to be former leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada

Skips should give their Leads More Responsibility and Respect

  

A Long Jack on Rink Three

I’ve got two gripes.

First, some skips, when playing in club or social games, just move the jack back in-bounds and center it, when a lead delivers it out of bounds or into the ditch. I know: you just want to speed up the game, but give a thought to the other lead on the rink. You are taking away that fellow’s chance to show proper mastery of line and length delivering the jack. When you don’t send the jack back to be rolled by the other side, you are effectively saying that mat position and jack length don’t matter as far as you are concerned.

Second, and I particularly feel this is important playing fours: don’t put your weakest player as lead. Your weakest player should bowl second. You want a lead who can give you the jack length you call for; who can be first in onto the jack; and who can smoothly co-operate with you about mat movement. Just to-day I was playing fours against a team whose lead consistently delivered jacks longer than she could bowl! A good lead works with the skip to get a jack length most accommodating to the whole team. The weakest player on the team can’t do this. 

The picture has nothing to do with the gripes! The guy third from the left is Jeff Harding from Canada.The game is being played at the Valverde LBC in Portugal.

A Stubborn Lead

I am not a good enough bowler to be a good skip; however I am accommodating to draw-masters at social rollups, so I do end up playing skip when everyone else is unenthusiastic about the role. Also, I know the World Bowls Rules Crystal Mark III well enough to protect my team from ‘pretender officials’.

At Valverde Bowls Club at Almancil Portugal a few weeks ago, I was the skip in a triples game. We (three gentlemen) were being pummelled by three ladies. They had been playing middle to long jacks consistently. Finally we won an end and had a chance to change something. When teamed with an inexperienced lead that cannot dependably change to a requested length, the best way to guarantee a change is to ask for a repositioning of the mat.

Amazingly, to me, my lead simply refused to move up the mat when signalled to do so! It is true that one rarely sees such a tactic at Valverde LBC but apparently (I was at the head and couldn’t hear what was said) even after the opposing vice spoke to him, either he didn’t think it was within the rules or he just wasn’t disposed towards it. I just shrugged and proceeded with the game since anything else would be unsociable and upsetting to the team.

Interestingly, my wife’s comment was that everyone hates when you do that.

When Losing: Move the Mat When You Change the Length

Author in Vilamoura Portugal 2016

In a triples match on Monday at Valverde LBC, a missed opportunity by the opposition illustrated the importance of moving the mat to change length as opposed to simply shortening the roll from the two meter mark.  I was leading for my team and we were winning playing full length jacks. Our opponents, each time they won one of the odd numbered ends, tried a shorter jack coming back. The difficulty was that they didn’t change the mat position. They didn’t realize that both my vice and I were using an unusual discoloration on the green as a visible stare point (the Valverde green is otherwise annoyingly uniform?!) and this was helping us disproportionately.

If our opponents had moved up the mat at the same time as they changed the length, our very useful visible stare point would have become useless and our better bowling, with respect to line, might have deteriorated

Time on the Mat

According to the World Bowls’ Laws of the Sport of Bowls Crystal Mark Fourth Edition, no maximum time for delivering a bowl is set. That being said, it is a courtesy not to be the slowest person on the green all the time. In Australia, they say, “A fast game is a good game.”

This blog author confesses to being a slower bowler. From getting on the mat until my bowl comes to rest in the head (or elsewhere) I do take more time than most. I have bowled slowly ever since I started playing. After ten years I am still bowling more slowly than many others. I do not do this to annoy. It is just that I enjoy the game only if I feel I am doing the best I can, and I think that I need more time than others to produce my best outcome.

If you need a consolation to avoid guilt at your slowness, realize that more time is typically spent by skips and vices visiting the head between bowls than you, as lead or second, are ever likely to use preparing yourself on the mat.

Fortunately, with experience, everyone’s delivery becomes more grooved, and some things that the novice needs to consciously check, become automatic. Thus, experience will decrease the time you need to spend on the mat before grassing a bowl. In fact, one can reach a point where spending extra time before delivering your bowl becomes counterproductive. I think it is universally true; you start bowling better when your routine on the mat is consistent and abbreviated. In Australia, over the Canadian winters of 2014 and 2015, I was told, “When you step onto the mat, you should already have been signaled the skip’s instructions and know what you are to do. Just step up and deliver.” Note that you should not step onto the mat until you have received and understood what the skip wants from you. If the skip is slow signaling, too complicated, or difficult to understand, this does not subtract from the time you have to execute your delivery. Also, if you have questions about the length or the distance between bowls or between a bowl and the jack, ask these before you step onto the mat; thereby, preserving your delivery routine.

There is a caveat; if anything disturbs you as you perform what is supposed to become a grooved delivery, immediately stop, step back off the mat, and begin your routine again. If you feel you are losing your balance during a delivery hold onto the bowl and restart. If some uncertainty such as whether you have the correct bias jumps into your head- stop the delivery. These things won’t happen often, but you should take the proper corrective action. Consistent excellence in sport depends upon undisturbed routine. With experienced players, bad shots most often arise from a loss of mental concentration.

Choosing your Lawn Bowls to Match the Conditions

This blog is not for novice lawn bowlers with five or fewer years’ experience because a novice typically has one set of bowls, chosen based both on his/her physique and the green most frequently played on. My first set of lawn bowls was black, size 4H, Taylor Vector VS. I expected to play lead on an outdoor, sand-packed, synthetic surface running about 16 seconds. With those bowls on that surface, my aim point was the number on the adjacent rink.

In my second year, when I started playing in tournaments on natural grass in Canada, I had no other bowls. Canadian greens are mostly under 10 seconds and I was aiming at the boundary marker or narrower on such rinks. Since I was always leading, facing short bowls in my way was not a significant problem.

In my third year I bought a new set of red, Size 3, Vector VS. My feeling was that the smaller size would improve my grip on heavier shots that required more backswing. My wife found these bowls to her liking and co-opted them! When I tried using them in tournaments at the home club I was charged with taking my wife’s bowls.

In my fourth year, I was given an old set of wide drawing bowls that were being discarded by James Gardens LBC. These ran so wide on that fast synthetic surface that no-one would use them. I took them to Willowdale LBC where, on natural grass, they behaved like Taylor Lignoids. The aim point on this grass was 25% wider than my Vectors. They had a definite hook at the end that could get past short bowls in front of the jack.

Based on her physique, the coach at Willowdale LBC recommended that my wife, Tish,  use a Size 1 bowl. We ordered a set of Taylor Aces. Because the color was being discontinued we got a good discount on a set in solid lemon yellow (that later developed cracks ). Tish tried using them both on the artificial carpet and then on grass but she never liked them. She preferred the red Vectors. These yellow Aces sat around gathering dust until this year when I tried them for playing skip in social games on the fast synthetic carpet. They felt so comfortable in my hand that I kept using them on and off.

According to the on-line literature, narrow bowls give problems first and foremost under windy conditions on hard, fast greens. This is not difficult to believe. Narrow bowls have an unstable line if they wobble because the running surface is engineered so the bowl draws differently when it is totally upright than it does as it slows down and begins to lean over. If the wind changes the tilt of the bowl, the drawing characteristics will change.  For the same reason, narrow bowls are less forgiving of the wobble often observed in the delivery of beginner bowlers. As a consequence I think beginning bowlers should not use narrow bowls. Fortunately, the old bowls that clubs lend out to beginning bowlers are mostly of the classic more stable profile. The take-away for more seasoned bowlers: do not use narrow bowls on fast greens under windy conditions! 

The More Forgiving Hand in Lawn Bowling

It is pretty well understood that one side of a rink is often more forgiving of line errors than the other. In contrast, there is an incorrect belief that the narrow hand is invariably the more forgiving hand. As well, few understand that whether a hand is forgiving or not depends in a complicated way upon the bias of your bowl, the contour of the green, and the position of both mat and jack, not whether the  hand is wide or narrow.

The most common example of a situation comprising a difficult hand arises when a visually imperceptible ridge runs down one side of the rink. If your line runs on one side of this ridge the bowl is held out, while on the other side the bowl swerves down like a surfer coming off a big wave, and runs across the center line. This kind of inhomogeneity sometimes can be counteracted by repositioning your feet (‘using the mat’) moving from a more central position to one side or the other, so that your bowls display consistently one behaviour or the other. The new more generous foot-fault rule in the new World Bowls rules (Crystal Mark 3) makes the mat effectively wider and so more useful in this regard.

In contrast, a very forgiving hand arises when, for example a visually imperceptible, shallow, concave dip (like a broad shallow gutter) runs down one side of the rink. If your bowl’s path is too wide, the valley wall draws it back; if your line is too narrow the opposite valley wall pulls it out. This helpful ‘dip’ may be found with equal likelihood on either the nominally narrow or wide hands. 

As noted, these concave or convex contours cannot be seen. They deviate from flat by so little that they are imperceptible. Yet they are sufficient to measurably deflect a bowl. They cannot be detected by rolling a single bowl.

There are clues however. Missing an established stare point and still ending up close to the target is a sign of a forgiving hand. Conversely when two of your bowls are delivered with much the same weight and both roll over your stare point, but end up far apart; this is a sign of an unforgiving hand.

The situation of an unforgiving hand can be confused with the case where one bowl delivery is deflected in course by some object in the grass. To distinguish between these two situations, every bowl needs to be watched closely throughout its travel. If there is a sudden jump or slip in a bowl's smooth curve, this suggests a hole in or a discrete object on the green.    

Competing at Lawn Bowls: playing as if on two Rinks in the same Match

In a bowls match, what remains the same for ends 1,3,5,7 etc.? How about ends 2,4,6,8 etc.? What is different between the two sets of ends? The difference is pretty well everything.  When the jack is delivered in the opposite direction on a rink, it’s as if you were playing on a different rink, on a different day; almost everything is different. Yet we so often act as if little has changed.

The fact is that almost everything you learn in the first end will only be useful when applied in the other ends that are bowled in the same direction. Similarly, what is learned in end two really can only be useful in other even-numbered ends? So a bowling match is really two matches woven together. The rule linking them strategically is that the winner in any end except the first gets to position the mat and roll the jack to a preferred length in the next end.

Consequently, if you can find a mat position and jack length that more consistently wins the odd ends, you will be provided many opportunities to investigate mat positions and jack lengths that may allow you to win in even numbered ends, and vice versa. Conversely, if you can’t win more of the odd numbered ends, you will get few chances to look for mat and jack positions that might favor you in even-numbered ends and vice-versa. 

Lawn Bowling Strategy and Tactics for Playing on End Rinks

Since the Vilamoura LBC here in Portugal shut down, the number of bowlers at the roll ups at  the  Valverde club in nearby Almancil has ballooned. All eight rinks are in use regularly. As a consequence, many more people end up playing on end rinks, where one boundary is only a few feet away from the side ditch. I was challenged by one of these rinks this week.

Although my team won the match, we lost two big ends where the opposition scored first five and then three shots. Analysis, after the match, suggested that these ends had something in common. In each instance, the opposition had the mat and  had  rolled a first bowl that blocked the draw from the more playable side, away from this ditch. In each of these ends I had changed  hands and attempted  deliveries that ran close to the ditch. None of these bowls ended within a meter of the jack. What had started out badly finished badly for my team.

The lesson seems to be that I should  have remained on the more playable hand; shifted my foot position on the mat, if I thought it would help, and tried to bowl around the apparent blocker. Even if my delivery were to collide with this troublesome bowl most likely the  impact would clear a path for subsequent bowls both mine and those of the rest of my team.