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.