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.