Since the first day that I received instruction about lawn bowls I had been told that my middle finger should rest on the mid-point of the running surface because that long finger is the last part of my hand to contact my bowl as I released it onto the green. So…. if I didn’t want it to tip a bit on its side, that finger needed to be centered on the bowl’s running surface. Well-- if I imagine a bowl resting with my fingers under it, supporting it, and then rolling off of them horizontally, this seems pretty clear and indeed that is roughly how a bowl is delivered using the palm grip.
However, the more popular lawn bowling grips are variations of the claw grip, where the thumb, placed on the top side of the bowl, clamps down on the bowl which rests on your fingers so that, even if you turn your hand over, the bowl remains securely held. In these grips, your hand is often bent back at the wrist so that it is your thumb that is parallel with your forearm and the bowl hangs down from your fingers with your thumb in front and your fingers behind the bowl. I show a picture of this above.
From this disposition, rather than rolling off your fingertips, the bowl's movement can be better described as falling a few millimeters from your ‘claw’ onto the green as you lower your whole body in the delivery motion.
Imagining what is actually going on based on this simplified ‘cartoon’, it is not nearly as clear that the last point of contact with the bowl is that middle finger.
But how does this matter? Well, when a bowl held as in my picture is released the part of the hand that retains contact with the bowl longest depends upon exactly how your hand lets go of that bowl. One way to release the bowl is to draw your fingers away from the bowl while holding your thumb steady. Another way is to raise your thumb tip off the bowl leaving your fingers fixed. A third way would be to draw both your fingers and thumb away from the bowl at the same time. In the first and third ways, because your fingers are moving, what remains in contact longest depends on how your fingers move. There is no certainty that your longest finger will linger until last on the bowl’s surface- it all depends on the coordination of those fingers. Consider option two. If we just raise the tip of your thumb the claw will release. Your fingers don’t need to move at all. Your release surely will be more consistently uniform. If you grasp the bowl the same way each time the chance is excellent that it will be released the same.
I don’t know if it will make an identifiable difference but I can’t imagine that it can be deleterious so that is what I am going to try to do.
