The Lead’s Bowls: the Second Bowl of an End at Lawn Bowls

 

When the opposition has the mat, they deliver the jack and the first bowl of the end. This is not the time to be chatting, getting a drink, or finding your own bowls. You should already be holding your first bowl and be standing behind your opposite lead watching the line taken and the result achieved. You should use this information to improve the outcome for your own first bowl of the end.

Leads are required to follow the instructions of their Skips and these instructions are provided by the hand and body signals they send once the previous bowler has completed a delivery. What is written here is only to acquaint you with some of the considerations a skip may be having when deciding what instructions to send.

Opposing Lead’s Bowl >2 meters from the Jack

An opposing bowl that finishes more than 2 meters from the jack should not be a consideration when deciding your own first delivery. Knowing the aim line that was taken by that bowl is very much a consideration. It can be a guide and a warning. Did it hit something in its course? Did it backup and break its smooth curving path? The rink may tell its secrets but you must listen!

Opposing Lead’s Bowl is Close and Behind the Jack

You might think that an opposing first bowl that finishes just to the side of the jack and around a bowl diameter behind would make your life more difficult, but in fact, it presents an opportunity. If you can follow that bowl down the rink and come to rest touching that bowl (resting the bowl) you will be shot. If by chance you strike that bowl with a bit more velocity you will roll it back and perhaps take its place! (chop and lie). In both cases, the opposition bowl makes it more likely that you will have a happy result.

Opposing Lead’s Bowl is Behind the Jack but Not Very Close

The opposing lead has just delivered a back bowl. Your skip will want your first bowl to finish closer to the jack but behind the jack. Your skip is likely to let you choose the hand you prefer. If you have no strong personal preference choose the hand your opposite lead just played, you will have a better estimate of the correct aim line. If you have no natural preference and the two sides are, as far as you know, equally well-known and equally ‘forgiving’ choose the same side as that upon which the opposing bowl has come to rest. If your bowl trails the jack you prefer it to go away from the opposing bowl.

Opposing Lead’s Bowl is Jack High but about a Mat Length Wide of the Jack.

‘Jack high’ means that the front edge of the bowl so described is level with the front edge of the jack. Another term is jack level.

This is a favorable situation for your side. This bowl does not block your delivery path and is not so close to the jack as to be an eventual serious competition for shot bowl. Rather it confers a small advantage to your side. 

If you deliver your bowl on the same hand with enough weight to reach to or behind the jack but your bowl runs a little wide you can get a wick off the inside edge of this opposing bowl that will nudge your bowl in towards the jack and push the opposing bowl away.

Your skip is likely to call for you to bowl to the jack on the same hand where the opposing jack high bowl is sitting.

Jack or Bowl Situation

Suppose the opposing lead delivers a jack-high bowl that is closer than the width of a bowl from the jack. This is the so-called ‘jack or bowl’ situation. Your skip might call for you to bowl to a specific spot on the other side of the rink from the close opposing bowl and slightly beyond the jack’s distance from the mat because that is where the jack is very likely to be by the completion of the end. You are being asked to prepare for the shot that will send this close bowl and the jack separate ways with the jack going hopefully towards your waiting bowl.

In Your Line but >1 meter in front of the Mat

Unfortunately, your skip will decide whether that bowl is in your drawline. I say unfortunately because often you will have a better idea of whether your delivery is blocked than your skip. For the sake of overall team cohesion please follow the skip’s decision in this situation; even though your judgment may be the better one. When the skip asks you to change the hand it is for fear that your bowl will be stopped far in front of the head. The open hand will give you a clear path to the jack! Check your bias. This is a situation where you might forget and the innocent error would be regarded as mutiny! 

In Your Line but Quite Close in Front of the Jack

Ironically, when your opposite’s lead bowl is unambiguously in your line, your skip may not switch you to the other hand. The reason is that even if you hit that blocking bowl squarely your bowl will finish a very good second and if your bowl just glances off that opposing bowl and rolls on a tad further it may be you who has shot bowl!

But if the opposition bowl is within 6 inches of the jack and you are asked to bowl the other hand still better! Your aim line runs between the bowl and jack but don’t be short. Anything behind is good.

Directly in Front of the Jack; Hiding the Jack

Your opposite has delivered an excellent shot. It is difficult to visualize your delivery when you cannot see the target. Ask your skip to show you the exact distance of the jack by placing a foot beside the jack with your toe pointing towards it. Let that visible toe be your target for visualizing your shot. There are three good outcomes of your delivery. You may hit this blocking bowl away. You may trail the jack or most likely of all you may widen the head making it easier to hit and disrupt.

 Centre Rink Close Behind the Jack

In lawn bowling ‘niggling’ is defined as unwarranted attacking your opposite's best bowls. Your opposition lead has delivered the best possible opening bowl!  Your own skip will probably call for you to get close behind the jack. Bowl enough narrow that besides getting behind the jack as your skip has instructed your bowl will make it back to center rink or even cross it. If perchance you hit something on the way you are a hero, if not you’ve done OK!

The Lead’s Bowls: The First Bowl of an End at Lawn Bowls

The lead whose side has possession of the mat has the privilege of delivering the jack. Remarkably to me, some people who can deliver bowls quite adequately cannot dependably keep the jack from passing out of bounds.  Therefore, a lead’s first responsibility is to be worthy of trust to keep the jack in bounds. The second responsibility is to be able to roll the jack to more or less the length the skipper signals.

In Canada and Portugal where I have mostly played, the centre line is not marked. When I bowled in Australia there was a clear white centre line extending about 10 metres out from the back ditch. Where there is no centre line, the lead needs to understand the skip’s signals that will be needed to make sure the mat is straight and on the center line, no matter where it is placed from the T up to the closest Hog line.

 While rolling and getting the jack centered, the lead’s first bowl should be sitting separate from the other bowls and close beside the mat. That way, immediately after the jack is centered, the lead can get set and deliver that first bowl. This is important because the weight used to deliver the bowl should be close to the same used for the jack and the shorter the intervening time the better the muscle memory.

Except for the first and second ends of a match, the lead should have learned the correct aim line from a previous end. It is the lead’s responsibility to remember the aim lines on the forehand and the backhand for each of the odd and even ends. The easiest way to do that is to remember the points where those aim lines intersect with the forward ditch. That is four distinct items. I used to write these down (for example): odd ends; forehand- at boundary, backhand- 3/4 towards boundary: even ends; forehand boundary, backhand 1 1/4 towards boundary.  These points move somewhat closer to center rink as the mat is moved up the rink toward the Hog line.

You can also learn how much bias to allow by watching the deliveries of other bowlers from a vantage position right behind the bowler to see precisely how they lay down their delivery and what the outcome is. You may have to make some allowance for the difference between your bowls and theirs. Check out what make and type of bowl they are used. That’s not against the rules!

For some reason that I cannot fathom, a lead’s first bowl is more often delivered too wide than too narrow when playing on grass.

This may be because, if the lead cannot remember the correct aim line for the hand and end, (s)he may take the boundary marker for the aim point. Because most greens in Canada or Portugal are somewhat slow, this aim line is too wide and the first bowl of the end doesn’t make it back to center rink. If you cannot remember or have never learned the correct aim line, I recommend running your aim line to intersect the front ditch 3/4 of the distance between the rink number and the boundary marker. This gives you a better chance to finish close to the jack on one side or the other.

The most important aspect of the first bowl of an end is that it should finish behind the jack. Perhaps you need to ask your skip to stand a useful distance behind the jack and imagine his/her feet as the target. However you do it, 70% preferably more of your first bowls need to finish behind the jack. 

When your side has the mat that first lead bowl is delivered with the knowledge that you have just sent the jack the same distance; but when you are the lead whose side did not deliver the jack, you must not fail to concentrate on visualizing the path your bowl must travel to reach that jack so that your first bowl will not be short. Watch carefully also the rhythm speed of the opposing lead to help with the weight. Of course, if it turns out to be a poor bowl you don’t want to emulate it!

As far as the correct aim line; you should remember it from previous ends but you also get a reminder hint from the line of your opposing lead— so long as you pay attention. 

The Usefulness of Moving Your Set Position On the Mat

 

What is the effect of moving on the mat and making the exact same delivery on a perfectly homogeneous and perfectly flat surface?

An assumption in this analysis is that one can repeat a delivery with exactly the same angle with respect to the center line and with exactly the same velocity. 

If your standard stare point is a spot on the forward bank you cannot use this technique.  Moving on the mat can have only a random effect. Your eyes are not good enough to change your aim point by such a small amount at such a great distance. 

If you are a bowler whose stare point is a physical discontinuity in the bowling surface between 3 and 5  meters in front of the mat, it is theoretically possible to effect a useful change in the finishing location of your bowl.

Suppose you move your anchor foot position 6 inches to the right in a horizontal direction with respect to the front edge of the mat while leaving unchanged the vertical location of your anchor foot. You then select a new stare point precisely six inches to the right of the first one at exactly the same distance in front of the mat line.

The original stare point, the new stare point, the new toe position of your anchor foot, and the old toe position of your anchor foot will now form the four vertices of a narrow parallelogram on the rink surface.

Now, so long as the bowl’s arc and your weight are the same as for the first delivery and so long as you exactly roll the bowl over your new stare point and have the exact same weight, then so long as the rink is perfectly homogeneous and perfectly flat this second bowl will finish 6 inches horizontal distance to the right of your first delivery. 

What this exercise leads one to conclude is that moving on the mat may be an effective strategy for a bowler that sets a stare point closer to the mat but will be futile for someone who aims with respect to a spot on the forward ditch!  

Visualizing the Path of Your Lawn Bowl

 A number of years ago I attended a Canadian bowling delivery clinic and I asked Steve McKerihan, a perennial member of the Canadian Commonwealth team, whether he visualized the delivery before executing it. He told me, “Yes- but I visualize the delivery in reverse.”

What he meant was that he started with a picture of his bowl at rest in the location that was his target (usually right up against the jack) and then saw in his mind’s eye the bowl slowly move away from the jack and with gradually increasing speed back through its arcing path to his delivery hand on the mat.

Frankly, I had forgotten about this remark for quite a few years but recently realized that this ‘running the video backward’ can improve my visualization, particularly the last portion going into the head.

It is not enough to just get an impression of the possible arcing path of the incipient delivery; this last part of the course where the bowl enters the immediate vicinity of the jack must be part of it.

Imagining your bowl rolling along this complete path (whether forward or backward ) is how you teach your subconscious that this is what you want to do next.

Visualizing the complete path is best done standing up straight behind the mat. Holding the line and holding one’s stare point on it is done in the ready position which, depending upon individuality, may be a crouch. I have found that squatting just behind the mat helps me precisely pick a stare point.

When I release my bowl from my hand I immediately sense whether it is going to be a good shot. Why this feeling comes is still a personal mystery.

Correct Weight More Important than Correct Line

During the first three years of my lawn bowling novitiate (2012-2014), I had been overwhelmingly concerned with line and had paid scant attention to length. The result: I rarely had a bowl that went out of bounds (an error of about 2 meters in line) but I often have errors of weight more than two meters!

Putting the problem this way makes it obvious that instead my first concern should have been correcting my weight and I should have left line to my developing intuitive sense. This should be the case particularly when playing on grass where bowling, aiming at the boundary mark, is never far wrong.

I was spending excessive time on the mat finding the stare point and insufficient time just assessing the distance to the jack and feeling the correct amount of backswing and forward muscular thrust.

My partner for novice pairs, Thomas Wu,  had invented a system of ‘notches’ in his backswing to control his weight and he encouraged me to try it. He said he could feel each of these positions in his backswing as a ’click’ so he knew when to arrest that backward swing and start his forward pendulum motion. 

Perhaps this sense comes with practice and perhaps not, but what is beyond dispute is that more attention to weight would pay dividends.

I tried paying primary attention to length in a friendly match at Willowdale LBC on a Monday evening back then. While doing this I simplified my game by setting my stare point on the forward bank rather than finding a closer spot on the rink. The combination resulted in the most satisfying result I had achieved for quite a while. My backswing clicks were at 6”, 9”, and 12” behind the heel of my anchor foot.

Although such mechanical guides are the only way to gauge distance when starting to bowl, after about six years one just imagines the required path of the bowl and then leave it to one’s subconscious mind to control the delivery.

How the Beginning Bowler Gets Started in Competitive Lawn Bowls

 

Tyro bowlers play their first games socially at the club level. You show up and a club Drawmaster randomly assigns you to a team. At the clubs I belong to in Toronto, Canada, this is usually teams of triples. As a new bowler, you will be asked to lead.

You deliver the jack, then three bowls, and rake up the bowls when the end is completed and the score has been agreed. There is no problem getting into a game. 

Whatever team gets you is stuck with you!

It’s a very different matter for tournaments where set teams are required. You need to become a member of a team and sign up as a team. How do you go about this?

Almost always you have to be asked. Almost always you need to be noticed playing in a club tournament before you will be asked to join a team playing in a tournament where players from all around a district participate., which is a step further. Who is the most likely person to invite you? It is a skip on whose team you get drawn in a social game. 

So how do you get noticed?

Wear your name pin when you play socially.

On some days, practice rolling a pail full of jacks to a fixed distance on a spare rink instead of entering the draw.

Learn how to avoid delivering the jack out through the side boundaries; putting a jack in the forward ditch is still not good but is more forgivable.

When playing socially ask your skip to place a shoe about a meter behind the jack as a target end location; explain you don’t want to be short!

Take advantage of any club coaching sessions.

In social games, follow your skip’s instructions.

Don’t try to take out the opposing lead’s close bowls; this is called niggling and skips hate it1

Strategy to Take Advantage of a Rink that Slopes toward the Ditches

A lawn bowling rink is ideally completely flat. The most common deficiency is to find that the surface slopes towards the ditches for about the two meters closest to these edges. This sloping can be so severe that you can see bowls accelerating as they roll down towards the ditches. You may also feel a more gentle sloping when standing close to these edges.

This sloping surface increases the randomness of every delivery that passes over these areas. The effect upon a bowl’s travel is most pronounced as the bowl is slowing. Bowls that finish further than the forward T will not usually stop but continue rolling and finish dead in the gutter. To minimize this, therefore, your side should shun really long jacks, if you think you have the more consistent team. But perhaps a better idea is to figure out how to put this condition to your advantage.

It is a good tactic to keep your jack deliveries 3-4 meters short of the front ditch and then deliver your bowls a shade narrower than usual because it is advantageous if your bowls just cross the center line as they reach the jack length. Only a bowl that gets back to center rink has any chance to become a toucher and move the jack backward. Being a toucher is of real value in this situation because both your bowl and the jack are more likely to end up eventually in the ditch. Moreover, it will be exceedingly difficult for the opponents to get a live bowl close to a jack that has been pushed closer than 2 meters to the ditch because any longish bowl that makes it so far forward is likely to roll downhill and die in the ditch. Big ends are more likely when your side moves the jack backward into this sloping area of the rink, so particularly if your side gets seriously behind in a match on such a rink, move the mat so you can get your jack just in front of such a slope.

When the jack is delivered just short of the sloping area of the rink, trying to place ‘catcher’ bowls behind the jack is no longer a good strategy. Such efforts are most likely to finish as dead bowls in the gutter. An alert skip, in this situation, will direct his team’s bowls to err on the side of being narrow to have a chance to touch the jack and if they do finish just short they will block the draw. Here, blocking can be more effective than usual because the opposition cannot simply follow the same line with a greater weight to finish closer to the jack because stopping a bowl behind the jack has become so unlikely. Usefully blocking the forehand or backhand draw is a much more promising tactic in this situation.

When one short bowl has been located in the draw of the opponents on one hand, it will be easier to find the line to draw another short bowl to block the other hand. Both shots should be delivered from the same side without changing hands. It is particularly advantageous to block both sides of the rink. Otherwise, the opposition may deliver all their remaining bowls on that free hand without further risk. If both hands are barricaded by your bowls and delivering behind the jack seriously risks rolling into the ditch, the opposition must chance knocking your short bowls closer to the jack when they deliver.

When a bowling green has its edges so distinctly sloping that a bowler finds it obvious, it is increasingly likely that other parts of that rink are also not level. This increases the likelihood that there will be two very different hands- one more forgiving and the other less forgiving. Also, the correct line to compensate for bowl bias will be different depending on the mat location and the jack length. If you believe your side can more rapidly adjust to such changes, then continually varying these will work to your side’s advantage.

When you place the mat at the T, you will be delivering your bowl from the sloping area of the rink. If you can feel this slope it is likely to affect your delivery. Your body weight will not be providing momentum to the bowls as effectively. Consequently, you are more likely to bowl short. To counteract this effect you will need to stay down longer in the delivery and perhaps make sure you step forward off the mat in your follow-through. On the other hand, if your jack is finishing well up the green, you may want to be a bit shorter as argued above.

Tactics/Gamesmanship Relating to Out of Order Play

Lawn Bowls Situation

In a pairs, triples, or fours game the most frequent irregularity is for a lead to deliver the first bowl of the end when his/her opposite should have done it. The Laws of the Sport of Bowls, Crystal Mark Fourth edition, states in this regard

29.1.1  If a player plays out of turn, the opposing skip can stop the bowl and return it to the player to play it in the proper order.

 
However, in serious competition, in the case where this is the first bowl of the end, this should never be done. Indeed, in this situation no member of a team should intervene to stop the opposition from bowling out of turn because the rules will penalize that delivery to your side’s advantage. 

What Happens?

Except for the less frequent occasion when that first bowl touches the jack(see Rule 29.1.3), the head will be undisturbed by this first bowl and Rule 29.1.2 will apply. 

29.1.2  If the bowl has come to rest and has not disturbed the head, the opposing skip must choose whether to:

29.1.2.1 Leave the head as it is and have their team play two bowls one after the other to get back to the proper order of play; or 

29.1.2.2 Return the bowl and get back to the proper order of play.

This rule gives the skip whose side has not improperly delivered, the choice to reject the delivery, if it is a good one, or accept the delivery, if it is a bad one. This is preferable to the skip stopping that delivery before finding out whether it is good or bad!

But there is an even better tactic. That is- Say nothing but rather get your own lead to deliver a second bowl and only after it has been played “discover” the mistake in the bowling order. In that instance, Rule 29.1.4 applies.

29.1.4 If a bowl has been played by each team or player in Singles before the players discover that one of them has played out of turn, play in that end must continue in that order.

By waiting until both leads deliver their first bowls before “discovering” that the order is wrong, your side gets to play behind your opponent for the entire end! In particular, your side gets to deliver the last bowl in the end.

When There is No Direct Path to the Jack during Play at Lawn Bowls

Particularly when playing triples socially, the skips may come to the mat and face a picket fence or thick wall of short bowls. There may be no draw to the jack. If your side has the shot bowl and there is no safe way to add to your count, you may just decide to add more blockers and leave the problem for your opposite number.

But suppose you are down in the head? In such a situation indirect tactics are required:

Bowl to a Nearby Close-Enough Spot 

Bowl to a spot that will give you shot even if it is as much as a mat length distant from the jack location. We get wedded to the idea that the only acceptable target is the jack itself. In fact, when only skip bowls are left to play, it is easier to guess just how close to the jack one really needs to get to obtain shot. A bowl a mat-length to the left or right or behind the jack might be quite sufficient and that path might be open.

Promote or Wick Off a Side Bowl

If your side has bowls right out in front of the jack, promotion is an easy call. When the bowl you must use for deflection is well to the side and 1-2 meters short of the jack, it takes more imagination to identify the available tactic to try. Make sure the target bowl belongs to your side; otherwise, you could only succeed in giving the opposition another point.

Try for an Otherwise Too Narrow Port between Two of Your Team’s Bowls

This play will give you three chances to succeed. You may raise one or the other of your own bowls or miracle of miracles you may just squeeze through the opening. For this play, you will need to visit the head to be sure you are properly assigning ownership of the close bowls. Where there is a choice among ports choose the one where your bowls are closer to the jack.