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.