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.
