The Magic of Finding a Distinct Stare Point to Control Bias at Bowls

 

Writing a blog about lawn bowling brings one back over and over to the same subjects- things I have talked about before. But these are so important and yet in my own practicing I find I lose sight of their importance and fall into those same bad habits and then wonder why I have a streak of bad bowling.

So when I let something important slip I assume that the same can happen for my readers and perhaps it is worth a reminder.

Here in Toronto Canada, the lockdown is ending and bowling clubs are opening their greens for practice alone and for singles. There are still lots of precautions even though most of the bowlers who are going to show up have been fully vaccinated.

I was out on the outside carpet at James Gardens LBC today. It was lovely sunshine and I was safely alone, locked inside the fence-enclosed green. I had just received my second dose of the Pfizer vaccine that very morning.

My weight control was good but my line control was appalling. What was going wrong? As it turned out I was having trouble holding my stare point. Earlier in the season, the green had been dotted with maple seeds so it was easy to pick a visible stare point. Now, they had all been blown away into the ditches, and because the carpet is so consistently uniform I was having trouble picking out some physical discontinuity to use as a stare point.

This reminded me that I had already written a blog teaching how, if one had control of the mat, one could place it at a distance up the green so that some remaining distinctive spotting could become a visible stare point. When I did this and combined it with a complete pre-delivery routine good bowling magically returned!