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