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.