Bowls Tactics: When You are Ahead in the Last End and Don't have the Mat

 

Introduction

Lawn bowls is a game where consistency is rewarded. It is not how close a single delivery is to the jack; it is how often your bowls finish close to the jack. Throughout most of a match no-one should fret if an opponent builds up a big lead beating your own close deliveries. So long as your side maintains consistently bowls well, the law of averages should be trusted to even out the difference.

When the final ends come around, however, such faith is no longer warranted. To win the match the team that is behind must act in ways that might be imprudent any other time in the match and the team that is leading must be aware of this and take appropriate counter-measures.

The more shots a side is behind, the sooner these more daring tactics need to be invoked.

You are Ahead in the Last End and Don’t Have the Mat

If the situation is that you have just lost the penultimate end of your match; but, you are still ahead; well, there is a bright side- you will have the last bowl in this, the last end! This is a very palpable advantage. So much so that you might have accepting down 1 in the previous end just to get it! The team with the last bowl has the better opportunity to score. 

The opposition has the mat and has the privilege of determining both mat location and jack length; however, very few skips make good use of these choices. Most likely they will go with either whatever length they just scored with or the longest jack possible. These are the commonest choices although not necessarily the smartest.

Strategically, it is significant whether the last end is open or closed. That is— whether the end can be killed and replayed, or the jack must instead be re-spotted if it is driven out of bounds. It is advantageous to the trailing team if killing the end is allowed. If your side at any point delivers a very close bowl that also widens the head, your opponents will be assessing the possible benefit from attempting a ‘kill’.

It is also strategically important whether the tournament rules require a tied game to be settled in some fashion- such as playing an extra end. If an extra end is specified, then a further consideration is what determines who gets the last bowl?

Finally, of course, it is of very considerable importance how many shots you are leading by?! To be leading even by a single shot when your side also has the last bowl is a considerable advantage. No matter how badly the end develops you will have that final chance to turn it around. The other side can do nothing about your last bowl. There is no rejoinder. Even if things continue to go badly if you can hold them to a single shot, you will be tied and if ties must be broken you will still have a chance to win!

If your side is ahead by three or more bowls, you or your skip will probably call for you to match bowls with your opposite number so long as your opponent’s bowl is behind the jack. Preferably, your bowl will still finish shot. The other side will be trying to group their bowls behind the jack and then trail the jack towards this grouping. Your side will want to place bowls in among their grouping positioned preferably so your bowl is are also closest to the jack to catch any trailed jack and to apply maximum pressure. 

Although it is always preferable to end up behind the jack, your side does not need to share this same level of fear as your opponents must. Perhaps almost as important is getting your bowls close to the center line. Then even if slightly short a bowl will reduce the chance for the opposition to hit the jack and, if within the rules, ’kill’ the end.

Because your side has the last bowl it does not have to protect in advance against the most common trick for the other side to get a big last end. That trick is to bowl everything long and then with their last bowl try to push the jack into the ditch. So long as you are comfortable bowling long with your last bowl, you are not in danger. If they fail to hit the jack you will earn a big score!

In the final end, it becomes of enhanced importance to consider the situation from the perspective of the opposing side. Have they already won the previous rounds in the tournament? Are their points-for sufficient to keep them in contention to win a prize? If the answers are yes to both these questions, they may take bigger risks to make up the score and thereby present you with the chance to be handed a big end yourselves.

When your side is ahead it is the other side that needs to be daring. You do not need to strain for more points- there is a good chance you will be handed them!

Since you have last bowl, the best situation your opponents can aim for is to be sitting match-in-hand when you come to make your final delivery.  This will put pressure on you. Your goal is to be positioned so that you can refuse your last bowl. 

Happy New Year 2021 but still No Portugal

 

Tomorrow, it is our custom to fly out of Canada to take up residence for three months in the Algarve, Portugal. There we can spend more time outside in the sunshine and lawn bowl multiple times during the week. Although Covid-19 is a serious threat in the north of Portugal, closer to Porto, our friends in the Algarve tell us that life remains remarkably normal there. Nevertheless, this year because of the lockdown in Toronto we are not prepared to travel yet. We think it is prudent to wait to see what kind of balloon in the rate of sickness may arise from the Christmas and New Year celebrations. Neither of us wants to become a burden on any health care system or to appear to be examples of poor citizenship. We will reevaluate the public health situation at the end of January. If it is sufficiently improved we will move our sojourn up to from February until the end of April.

Bowls must triumph in the end! 

In the meantime Happy 2021 New Year everybody. 

Playing or Not Playing your Last Bowl at Lawn Bowls

Last Bowl in the End

When your side has the last bowl there may be more risk playing into the head than potential benefit. The Laws of Bowls permit you to forgo that delivery and count the end as it stands.

However, at least when playing on outdoor greens which may not be perfectly flat, You should always use that last unnecessary bowl to explore some unused part of the green.

The most frequent situation will be when you have only knowledge of one side of the rink. For example, early in a match, you may have only bowled forehand. Given last bowl in a head you do not wish to change and where the best option incurs substantial risk to your advantage, you should experiment to learn the draw on the unfamiliar backhand side. Since you most definitely don’t want to disturb the head, you should bowl long if the end is a short one and vice versa.

Another possible way to use your extra bowl, is to target one edge of the rink. This will give you advanced knowledge of the amount of grass to take when the jack is displaced towards that boundary later in the contest. At the same time you will not be putting the present head situation in danger.

Last Bowl for your Side

When you have the penultimate bowl, you may still not want to risk disturbing the head even though you know your opposition skip will have one more try to change the outcome. Whether you need to bowl into the head depends upon how many other possible counting bowls you have. If your side has only a single bowl protecting against a large score by the opposition usually the best choice is to try to deliver another counter. This should be balanced by assessing how exposed your best bowl is to attack.

If after all these consideration, you still feel that you should not risk interfering with the head you can choose to:

Bowl to a respot position if you are playing ‘no dead ends’.

Place the ‘backest bowl’ on the side of the rink where a displaced jack is most likely to go.

On a slow green, place a 14 meter blocker  to protect against a draw or run through shot if only one side of the rink remains playable (one cannot place a 14 meter blocker on a fast green because the blocker would be on another rink)

On a fast green, place a blocker 2-3 meters short of the head on the centre line to protect against a drive (on a slow green it is difficult to protect against both forehand and backhand drives because both paths will entail curvature) 

In the situation where you do not wish to disturb the head but you need your last bowl to be ‘in the count’ you need to be increasingly aware that your bowl must finish behind the head but not be narrow.

In 2020 How Would I Describe My Bowls Delivery?

I bowl from the Shooters’ stance. My anchor foot is positioned at an angle of 45 degrees to the line of delivery. I have chosen this because it provides less side-to-side tilting during my stepping when I am on one foot only. For the set-up, I use the South African foot positioning which places the stepping foot one-half a stride in front of the anchor foot. This reduces the length of the forward stride and reduces the time that I'm standing on one leg. I hope this increases my stability. In my set position, I have my non-bowling hand resting on the knee of my forward leg. This keeps my center of gravity lower than it would otherwise be in a completely erect posture; again trying to minimize sway. My hand on my knee locks in the stability. My weight is essentially completely on my anchor foot so that my forward stepping will be less encumbered.

My wrist is no longer cocked. I abandoned this experiment because it was inconsistent with having a more relaxed arm. The biggest change from previous years is that I now hold my bowl tilted, even in the ready position so that no  Bryant twist is required during the backswing. This follows the observed practice of Stuart Andersen (search Stuart Andersen in this blog). The natural position of my hand, when it hangs loosely at my side, is not with fingers parallel to my aim line but slightly turned in. Previously, when I was using a Bryant twist in my backswing I felt the bowl’s changing center of gravity as I twisted my wrist was throwing off the smooth line of my backswing. Starting with the wrist off-center as Andersen does eliminates this perception. Bringing my wrist back into line, so the bowl’s running surface coincides with the aim line, occurs in the forward swing and I do not feel it.

My grip for a draw or running (run-through) shot is best described as having the “C” formed by my thumb and index finger on the bowl’s grip marks. (Since I use Aero Zig-Zag Grooved bowls, there is an actual channel for my thumb and finger.) My middle fingertip is centered on the running surface of my bowl. In contrast, for a drive, all four of my fingers are on the bowl with my index finger on one grip and my baby finger on the other.  My two middle fingers are near the center of the running surface. Putting all four fingers behind the bowl seems to improve my power while preserving accuracy.

Following David Bryant’s teaching, holding the bowl in a proper grip and standing in my proper set position, I look back and forth alternating between my stare point, over which I must roll my bowl to get the proper bias swing, and the jack location, whose distance I need to internalize to get the proper weight. At the same time, I make a few abbreviated practice swings along the proposed line, and then when I feel comfortable I begin my backswing.

My backswing is slow and measured; like an archer drawing his bow or a pool player lining up his cue. My mind is focused on keeping my backswing on top of the extension of my aim line out behind me. My eyes stare at the ‘stare point’ on my aim line which I want my bowl to traverse. As the bowl passes the lowest point on my backswing, my stepping foot starts forward. My stepping foot points (the centerline between heel and toes) along the aim line and comes down parallel and close to the aim line. The continuation of my backswing and my forward stepping somewhat offset each other in terms of weight transfer but I sense some net transfer of weight backward on my anchor foot at this point. As my forward-stepping foot gets planted on the ground my forward swing begins accompanied by a smooth transfer of my body weight forward onto my forward leg. My body dips slightly to bring my bowl closer to the ground. I release my bowl just in front of my forward foot. During the forward stepping and forward swinging, my mind is blank—in order to commit complete control to my subconscious. Once the bowl is released, I consciously observe whether I have rolled the bowl over my stare point so that I will know whether I need to correct my line or simply do a better job of hitting it!

It is important, I think, to be sure that one completely transfers one’s body weight forward onto one’s stepping foot. This is achieved by taking an actual step off the mat.  I have so far failed to consistently follow this, so it is a work in progress. I am also trying to vigorously draw my fingers and thumb off the bowl as I release it so that there is no last-minute deflection from the line; but, this so far is just a hoped-for outcome. Since I am trying to leave the forward swing to my subconscious it is difficult to consciously control the bowl’s release.

 

Illustrating the Importance of Controlling the Mat

 

The importance of control of the mat so that one can dictate jack length is sometimes not emphasized enough. An entertaining Youtube video of a match between Katelyn Inch and Chloe Stewart forcefully reminds us of that principle.  The match exhibits massive swings correlating with the choice of the mat length. 

The match has another teaching at the 2:46:30 minute mark. Chloe has a perfect position with counting bowls immediately in front of and immediately behind the jack but she accidentally disturbs the head while trying to place her next delivery behind the head. The jack becomes exposed and Katelyn is able to take advantage. A short blocking shot that would force Katelyn either to avoid it when driving at the head or change hands for a run-through shot would have been better tactics and wouldn’t risk disturbing the head.

The Ten Top Greenbowler Lawn Bowling Blogs

Ryan Bester at Broadbeach

 

I've been posting The Greenbowler Blog for seven years. Although, as the editor, I can see which of my 228 posts have been more popular this information is not readily available to readers although posts can be selected by keywords using the search tool in the right-hand column of each blog article. So below, I list, each with its own link, my 10 most popular blog articles of all time. If this proves useful and there is a demand for it, I will supply links for numbers 11-20 later.

1. The Secret to Controlled Weight

2. Strategy and Tactics at Bowls

3. Lawn Bowling from the Shooters Stance

4. Measuring at Bowls

5. Jack or Bowl: Reading the Head

6. Strategy of Leads at Pairs

7. Controlled Weight

8. Choosing your Correct Bias for Bowls

9. Delivering Bowls with a Cocked Wrist

10. Henselite Supergrip Championship Bowls

Covid-19 Provides the Opportunity to Practice Bowling to Severely Displaced Jacks

 

All over the world, Covid-19 restrictions have mandated that lawn bowlers must only play or practice on alternate rinks. Although there is much that this order prevents it does enable one thing. In our practice routines, we can all now include bowling to jacks that have been displaced to locations close to the side boundaries.

While play is normally permitted on all the available rinks practicing drawing to a jack near a boundary of one’s own rink frequently requires either bowling across a neighbor’s rink or delivering inside out bowls that end up out of bounds on that neighbor’s rink or interfering with a neighbor’s natural draw line as he/she tries to draw to a centered jack on that adjacent rink.

Now with the rinks on either side of your practice rink ordered empty by the Covid regulations, there are no neighbors to annoy. Let us therefore boldly seize this chance. It is my fervent wish that this opportunity will soon disappear and never return!

Considering a Block Shot

 

A good block shot is hard to deliver. Even when the bowl seems to have ended up in its best location, it often proves ineffective when the opposing skip understands how to ‘use the mat’ to get around that interfering bowl. Usually placing a bowl instead close to where the jack is most likely to be moved is the best percentage play; however, I think a block needs to be considered, if only for its psychological impact,

When:

yours is the next-to-last bowl (penultimate) and a few of the following conditions coexist:

 You have one shot within a foot of the jack and a close second. 

 The back (particularly re-spot) is already covered.

 It would be very demoralizing if your side disturbed the head.

 The opposing skip has an excellent drive.  

 The target presented is large and/or close.

 The rules permit ends can be burnt. 

There is really only one hand that affords a realistic approach to the head. 

 The opposing skip has recent experience with only one particular hand in this direction. 

 You are in the last 1-2 ends and you are ahead.

 You absolutely need the opponent to miss because you need the full count.

 There is a funnel configuration leading into the jack.

There are two or three enemy bowls in front but not counting.

 

Caution: You do not want to attempt a block shot before the penultimate shot (next to last), because you would not want to block yourself if the situation in the head changed in the opponents’ favor after your block.

Where:  

Against either a Run-through or Drive

A block shot directed against either a run-through shot or a drive is thrown just more than 14 meters and placed in the anticipated bowl’s path. This is accomplished by aiming at a point midway between the center and the edge of the rink. Advance the stepping foot completely along the aim line and place it at an angle of 45 degrees to the line. This is the stance of a push bowler. No weight is transferred forward during the swing. From a completely vertical position with the bowling arm just hanging down the bowl is pushed out with the arm only and set rotating with the fingers. With this impetus, the bowl should travel about 14 meters.

Against a Run-Through via a Port
 

Where you want to close a port through which the opponent is likely to direct a run-through shot, bowl the opponent’s shot but be light and very slightly wide.

Against a Drive

To block both a forehand and backhand drive the blocking bowl needs to be past the hog line and close to the center line. About 3 meters in front of the head is good so that if it is hit it won’t disturb the head itself unless it is struck in the absolute center.

Adding a bowl at the back is the correct play if the opposition can score a multiple if the jack is sent backward. Placing a bowl behind among opposing bowls is much easier than placing a good block.

Some opponents never drive. Some only draw, others may also try a shot through the head. It is useful to know the particular style of your opponents. There is no point in countering a shot that is never going to be contemplated!

Tactical Shots at Lawn Bowls

 

Turramurra LBC

There are four distinguishable tactical shots in lawn bowls. The draw shot has as its target its final ending place.… that is, the shot is successful if your bowl finishes precisely where you are aiming it to go. Both the yard-on shot and the running shot,  in contrast, are successful if they don’t reach the spot the bowler is aiming for. Their purpose is to hit something in the head as they pass through it toward their target destination. The drive is distinguished in that if it fails to hit its target it will always finish in the ditch or out of bounds.

The Draw Shot

A Draw Shot is the most frequent shot and it is really what the game is all about. For this shot, the player attempts to play with the exact weight and line required to finish closest to the jack.  Less frequent tactics may require drawing close to some other location on the rink often to protect against the jack being subsequently displaced backward or to block the path opponents may use to get bowls into the head. Mastering this shot is considered to be the most essential in all bowls.

 The Yard On Shot

The "Yard On" shot is a bowl that is played with enough weight to carry it, if unobstructed, a yard or two past the target but the line that is supposed to be taken causes it to pass through the head near the jack. The objective of this shot is usually to drag the jack away from opposing bowls, hopefully towards your own, or to push a bowl out of the "head" and take its place. In Scotland, this is often referred to as a "chop and lie" shot. The shot is more often successful on heavier greens where bowls express less of their bias. With ‘swingy’ bowls on a fast surface, the yard-on shot that misses its target often ends up well out of the head and is most often no longer a factor in play. 

The Running Shot or Ditch Length Shot

The Running Shot is one that uses more weight than the yard-on. The object of this shot is to remove the opponents’ bowls from the head, to move the jack to the ditch, or to seek some other result that requires the bowl to be played with weight. The difference between it and the drive is that the running shot has a greater chance of avoiding the ditch itself even if it misses its target. This is important when your side has no back bowls or when the jack is required to be respotted if the jack is driven out of bounds. This can be a difficult shot to play as the line (bias) required for hitting the target changes with different weights. The weight should be constant with the line adjusted to allow your bowl to pass through the head. The ditch length shot is less useful on fast greens because a bowl that misses the head is likely to finish out-of-bounds because of the greater curling of a bowl on a fast surface.

The Drive

The drive shot is a bowl that is played with the highest weight that one can muster without sacrificing accuracy of line. Striking the target, usually the head, with full force is the desired result. The tactical objective of this shot may be to completely remove the opponent's bowls from the head or from the rink or to drive the jack into the ditch or out of play. It is most often used when a player has at least several shots against him and they are mostly closer to the jack than he is likely able to draw. In this case, the object is to destroy the head by driving the jack out of the rink. When successful this results either in getting the end replayed (traditionally) or causing the jack to be repotted (recently) which may be advantageous. This can be a very effective and intimidating shot to have in your armory but many players have difficulty controlling their direction when concentrating their efforts on so much weight. With the respotting rule more frequently practiced today, less velocity and more accuracy are more likely to produce an advantage. When delivering the drive it is very important to release the bowl no more than six inches in advance of the forward foot since holding your bowl longer is likely to cause narrow bowling.  

Avoid Dropping your Bowl: A Back Swing for Palm Bowlers

 

Bowlers who use a palm grip have a special problem; because they do not position their thumb on top of the bowl they cannot squeeze the bowl firmly and so cannot dependably hang on to the bowl if they want to deliver with any significant backswing.

This isn’t always a matter of choice. Many bowlers, whether because of the length of their fingers or because of medical deficiencies, cannot grip with their thumbs. Not having any significant backswing can make delivering a bowl to longer jacks, for them, either challenging or impossible.

I believe I have stumbled upon a way to overcome this problem. While studying the deliveries of the best indoor lawn bowlers for blog articles about them, I noticed that Stuart Anderson holds his bowl with its running surface at an angle to the delivery line throughout his backswing. He then straightens his wrist either at the top of his backswing or during his forward swing and releases it with the bowl’s running surface parallel with his aim line. This differs from what is taught to most beginning bowlers who are taught either a straight backswing or a drawing back combined with a Bryant twist.  Anderson uses a claw grip so why he does this very individualistic thing is unclear. What is very clear is that it does not subtract from his efficacy. Anderson won the World Indoor Bowls championship in 2019!

What I came to realize however was that if palm bowlers adopted this change they could have a secure backswing in their deliveries without any complicating coordination of swinging and twisting their wrists as is so often taught in Australia and New Zealand. The reason this works is that if you align your hand like Anderson does when you take your backswing, your thumb, if it is at the side of the bowl, will end up under the bowl and hold it more securely in your hand!

I, myself, use a claw grip but even without practice, I was able to switch to a palm grip and still retain the same pendulum swing which I had become part of my standard grooved delivery.

Z Groove Sonic 3.5 Aero Bowls

 

The author of this Greenbowler blog purchased a set of factory-new Z Groove Aero bowls which he has used successfully for the past 3-4 years. I only bowl with them in Canada. When I travel to Portugal in the winter months, I use borrowed bowls, usually any old standard bias Henselite set.

In Canada, I bowl on a variety of surfaces. The James Gardens LBC has a 10-year-old sand-packed woven carpet that has a draw very similar to fast Australian greens. At Willowdale LBC they have two heavy grass greens that I would estimate to run about 10 seconds (this year because of the reduced use they are spongy and are cut so long that it is difficult to reach the forward ditch and your aim point should be half-way between the rink marker and the rink boundary!) Willowdale has a synthetic third green consisting of an artificial plastic rink consisting of sewn together strips over a rubber underlayer that runs maybe 14 seconds, where the aim line would typically run to the midpoint between the boundary marker and the rink number of the adjoining rink.  These Aero Sonics work satisfactorily on all these surfaces.

My hand is big enough that thumb to thumb, index finger to index finger, I can circumscribe a #4 bowl but with ordinary bowls, without the Aero groove, I had settled on using a #3 in order to gain a firmer grasp when driving or playing under wet conditions. Using the Groove technology I was able to go back up to a #3.5 thereby recovering the advantages of a slightly larger bowl. 

On the heavier greens more characteristic in Canada, the wind does not significantly deflect bowls to significant consequence, at least for even a good club player. Playing on a hard synthetic surface like James Gardens wind gusts do deflect deliveries. I am told that dimple grips reduce the drag on bowls and I think that the Z grip with a groove combination could provide greater stability in a wind in the same way that the dimples all over a golf ball decrease its wind resistance. To prove this point one would need to find a location with much flatter greens than the ones regularly encounters here.

Aero bowls do not follow a path mimicking the Sydney bridge. Fortunately, this is only marketing hyperbole. Like all bowls, they exhibit (roughly) about a quarter of their bias in the first 3/5ths of their travel, 1/4 in the next 1/5th, and the residual half in the last 1/5th. I also own a set of Taylor Vector VS bowls. The Z Groove Aero bowls seem to be a shade wide and enter the head a shade flatter than my Vectors but unless you are a champion or have observed both sets for a long time it is hard to spot the difference.

I do not use any form of Grippo product unless it conditions are wet or it is actually raining. Neither do I wet my fingers before bowling. The Z Groove might not be easy to play in these situations but I have no experience one way or the other. I can only imagine that it could be more tedious getting a uniform application of anything onto a bowl when there are indentations (the Z) in another indentation (the groove).

My set are the Solar Flare color which is yellow background with red flecks as in the picture. Playing on artificial surfaces impregnated with Canada goose shit can discolor the running surface with a greenish-grey shadow that cannot be removed with just soap and water. The KLR product which is used to clean away rust and soap grime from toilets and showerheads does clean up this problem and restore the original colors. 

Why One Aims with the Advancing Foot Bowling from the Shooters’ Stance

 

It makes a lot of sense to place your anchor foot at 45 degrees to the aim line for a lawn bowling delivery. Placed at an angle rather than parallel to the aim line gives more stability when all your weight is on one foot as one steps forward. But why should one step out with one’s advancing foot toe pointing at your stare point on your aim line as also recommended by New Rodda?

 

Following the same argument wouldn’t it give an even more stable base to have that advancing foot also come down firmly at an angle to the aim line? 

I couldn’t understand the difference until recently when I was thinking about a different problem. How could I bowl smoothly if my stepping foot landed with a jolt as I set it firmly down in my delivery? The answer appears to be that I would need to come down on my forward stepping heel and rock forward transferring my weight from heel to sole and finally to my toes as I walked off the mat. But this is only possible if one points the advancing foot  somewhat parallel to the aim line. 

So that is the real reason why Nev Rodda  says to use the advancing foot to aim: the purpose is not really to enhance your aim (as he says, “This is how I like to explain it.”) but rather to smoothly transfer weight from the anchor foot to the advancing foot!

Widening the Head in Preparation for a Drive

A situation can arise in lawn bowls where your side is down several shots in the head but the head is very narrow and makes a poor target for a forcing shot. This can happen when the opposition has some combination of bowls immediately in front of the jack and immediately behind it. The target is thus not much more than one bowl wide.

Attacking in this situation needs to be a two-step strategy. First, your side needs to deliver a bowl roughly jack high with a gap of less than a bowl between it and the bowls in front of and behind the jack. This close bowl can provide the base for a wick in onto the jack or one of the opposition bowls. Because the target has been substantially widened before the heavy shot intended to attack the head, the likelihood of a successful attack will be substantially increased.

When playing triples it is particularly important for the vice to understand that in this situation the vice’s job is to widen the target. The skip’s job is to subsequently disrupt the head with a wick in off the preparatory bowl.

An example of what not to do arises in a match between David Gourley and Kevin Kurkow at the 31:40 minute point. David is two down; the target is just one bowl wide, but he has two bowls remaining. In the instance he drives first and misses the small target, then draws very close, but not enough to reduce the count, with his last. If he had done the reverse he would have had a much enlarged target for a last bowl drive.

When and How to Deliver a Yard-On Shot

 

Turramurra LBC 2015?

An "up-shot", "yard-on" or ”on-shot” is a lawn bowl delivered with weight, greater than a draw shot, indeed enough to displace the jack or disturb other bowls in the head, without killing the end or losing the delivered bowl in the ditch or outside the rink boundaries. It is also referred to as "controlled weight” or as a “rambler".

The on-shot to a medium length jack is, for me, the most difficult shot in bowls. The target must be imagined. The exact length is more difficult to estimate compared with the very short or very long jacks and the correction in aim-angle compared to the normal draw angle is close to the error I have in actually bowling on the aim-angle.

The on-shot can only be dependable if you can correctly imagine the path your bowl would take on the rink if unobstructed. You also need to be able to estimate the velocity with which your bowl needs to hit the assemblage in the head and convert that velocity into an assessment of what distance that weight would carry your bowl if it was unobstructed. Combining this information with the imagined bowl’s unobstructed path that passes through the head provides a target location.

You then need to deliver your bowl with the correct line and length so that, if the path had been unobstructed, it would roll to the target location. To accomplish this, it is helpful if the person directing in the head indicates the target location with his(her) extended foot to provide a distinct target that can be seen from the mat.

An attempted on-shot should never be short. You only give oneself a chance to disrupt an unfavorable head by reaching it! A short bowl may make your next attacking bowl more difficult.

A yard-on shot should be considered when the opponent’s shot bowl is rather close to the jack or the opponent has a number of very close bowls or even if access to the head is simply blocked leaving you down in the count.

 The yard-on shot is characteristically used by skips and vices, not leads (who should be drawing their bowls to build the head and in so doing making sure that all their bowls are behind the jack).

Another Minor Change in My Own Delivery after Scrutinizing the Pros

In recent blog articles, I have examined the delivery styles of some of the top-ranked indoor lawn bowlers using slow-speed and stop-action footage. This instructed me more clearly whose delivery I most resembled and from whose I most diverged. My overall body movement most resembled David Gourlay’s. My grip and hand position most resembled Stuart Anderson’s. 

The Small Change

This analysis motivated me to make one small change in my own delivery. Stuart Anderson, alone among all the bowlers whom I looked at closely, was the only one who instead of using a Bryant twist in his backswing, instead, tilted his bowl while in the ready position, took it back tilted, and only straightened his wrist during his forward swing before releasing his bowl.

I have found that if I use a Bryant twist as I draw the bowl back by changing the center of mass of the bowl it causes a 'jiggle' in the otherwise smooth draw-back. This is avoided with Anderson's technique.   

The Mysterious Lawn Bowls Delivery of Andy Thomson MBE

Andy Thomson MBE is not among the top 14 bowlers as ranked in 2019-2020; nevertheless, he is among the top bowlers of all time and his delivery is the most distinctive of all. As such, it is worthy of analysis. Andy’s bowl delivery is not being presented as a model for imitators but as a mystery. 

What sets Thomson apart, first and foremost, is that after sighting along his aim line he does not hold his stare point. Prior to starting his delivery action, he is looking at his feet! 

Second, unlike other top bowlers he releases his bowl with a flick of his fingers to provide some spin to the bowl. Other bowlers either let the bowl roll off their fingers, or draw their fingers away from the bowl in a characteristic fashion. 

Finally, like the delivery of David Bryant, Andy Thomson rises up to delivery his bowl rather than bending down. He rises, lifting his bowl from a position touching the rink in order to make a short backswing before starting it forward. Unlike Bryant who initially squats to sight his delivery, Thomson is completely upright, bending forward with legs straight as if to touch his toes.

But let us analyze step by step.

Grip

Before gripping the bowl, Andy licks his baby finger. I do not know why he does this. The only hypothesis I can imagine is that it reminds him that he needs to keep his baby finger off the bowl. His grip is the three-finger claw grip with the three fingers under the bowl placed with the index finger in the groove, his middle finger on the running surface and his third finger in the groove opposite. His thumb is either in the grip groove or slightly towards the running surface.  I have difficulty identifying the exact position of Andy’s thumb. His three fingers are not parallel with the running surface of the bowl but their tips lie on an imaginary line at an angle of about 45 degrees to the line of the running surface.

Stance

Thomson stands with his feet parallel and side by side. He bends at the waist and not at all at the knees; in the pose of someone exercising by touching their toes. He slowly lowers the bowl until it just touches the ground. His non-bowling hand rests at the side of the bowl with fingers extended steadying the bowl.

Before taking this pose, he has looked carefully at the length and line but when his head is bowed in this pre-delivery pose, he cannot possibly see any stare point that is not within a few feet of his feet.

The Wobble-Stagger??

Delivery

Andy uses very little backswing. His free hand hangs loose and is not used to steadyhimself. Furthermore, his entire body seems to wobble as he sends forward his arm and releases his bowl.

I cannot understand why Andy Thomson would choose this delivery style unless he has a back problem that he is trying to avoid aggravating. There is a faint suggestion that this might be true. He regularly moves his non-bowling hand to his back at waist height as he rises after each delivery as if to ease a twinge of pain.