‘Hangers’ & ‘Cutters’ at Lawn Bowls

I don’t know whether the terms ‘hangers’ and ‘cutters’ are established parlance among lawn bowlers but certainly no bowlers I have encountered seemed to have any difficulty understanding what I meant. I learned the terms from Bob and Jeanne Christie, who split their residence time between Toronto Canada and Sun City Arizona, and who gave me my first lessons and then my first experiences playing in tournaments.

Neither cutters nor hangers occur on truly flat greens. A hanger is a bowl that does not turn in towards center rink at the end of its travel. It ‘hangs’ out wide. A cutter is a bowl that travels more narrowly than its natural anticipated path. It ‘cuts’ across the rink and crosses the centerline. 

A lawn bowl is deflected most severely from its natural path when it is moving slowly. Thus an unobservable, slight sloping of a lawn bowling green modifies most that portion of the bowl’s travel when it is moving slowest- approaching the jack. Thus a tendency to hang or cut which is pronounced when bowling, say, east to west may be undetectable when bowling back west to east. Similarly, a tendency to hang or cut can disappear when the mat position is changed or when the jack length is altered.

The hand which shows evidence of hangers or cutters is likely to be a difficult hand to play because the extent of the hanging or cutting is likely to be a sensitive function of the precise line of delivery. Put another way; that hand is likely to be ‘unforgiving’. It is likely to magnify your deviations.

How do you distinguish between a hand that exhibits ‘hanging’  or ‘cutting’ and a flat green that demands more or less bias?  Hanging and cutting normally show the greatest amount of deviation from their normal curvature at the end of their travel when your bowl is moving slowest. When you take the wrong line you will instead recognize it almost instantly; certainly before your bowl reaches mid-rink. With a hanger or cutter, you will not realize that your bowl is going to miss its target badly until the bowl has passed its shoulder and starts what should be its normal turn in towards the jack.