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.
Good point, Clarke. Sometimes skips are too keen to be encouraging. They're almost as bad as critical skips. I generally don't tell the player how to adjust their line unless they're inexperienced or keep delivering wide or narrow. Anyone with reasonable experience knows if they're narrow or wide and will often indicate this while the bowl is in flight. What they really need to know is how long or short they ended up, since it's hard to judge that information. I tell the last player by how much they were short or long, and congratulate a good shot, and tell the incoming player what hand to play and if I need the bowl in a specific area.
ReplyDeleteSo, John, you think the skip knows the line needs correcting and is just trying to be encouraging? I qwould love to share your optimism.
ReplyDeleteI encountered this situation in my first roll up this New Year at the Valverde LBC. When a bowl such as that pictured (was about about 4 meters short and a quarter rink wide) two people at the mat end of the rink commented that it was a good line but needed length, I couldn't resist and said that it was too wide. My opposite vice said that I needed to take into account bias. I didn't dispute this but both these players followed the same line and ended wide; so it was not a miscommunication. They did think that all that was needed to correct was more weight. Interesting.....
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