Playing Lawn Bowls on Wet Greens

Lawn bowling is more fun in good weather but if you want a quality of competition higher than club-social, you need to sign up for tournaments. These events usually feature sponsorship, food service, and prize money, so they mostly proceed irrespective of the weather. Only lightning or other dangerous conditions stop play so as a participant you need to have the proper kit to be as comfortable as the circumstances allow.

Bowlers can purchase special water-impermeable jackets and coveralls. These do repel water but they don’t provide much ventilation so a bowler may be protected from precipitation but not from perspiration. The rules about wearing only whites or team colors seem to be dismissed during prolonged rain. Whatever you can muster will be accepted. Many players prefer just to get wet so long as it isn’t cold at the same time.

Umbrellas are not allowed on lawn bowling greens because the point acts as a lightning rod.

If the weather report warns of inclement weather during the period of your play bring extra towels. This is often overlooked. Four or five towels will be needed if it is expected to rain throughout a match. Your team-mates may not be so prescient and you may have to lend to them. This might be your most consequential contribution of the day; it may improve every bowl delivered by your side. Certainly, it will be most welcome! 

Besides toweling the dirt and water from all the team’s bowls, it is useful to have some covering that can be draped over the heap of wiped bowls to keep the rain off until each is delivered.

This draping of your bowls can alternately be substituted by setting them on an extra mat placed on the bank behind the rink, covered with a small umbrella. However, this only works in the absence of wind!  

When it is raining,  several adjustments may help. If you have more than one set of bowls, try using the smaller bowls as you will find a better grip and an easier delivery with these when your hands are wet.  

Particularly if you normally do not use it, some form of Grippo can help. Gloves may improve your gripping. Golfers have special gloves…. or try those kitchen rubber gloves with grip ridges. I like the garden gloves that are cloth with rubberized palms and fingertips.  

If you have already practiced it, you can go so far as to change your grip. The claw grip requires your fingers to be tight against the bowl which is difficult when wet. A cradle grip supports the bowl with your entire palm. Delivering from a cradle grip provides more relaxed support when the bowl is wet and comprises a greater amount of rolling of the bowl off your fingers in the delivery. This gives the further benefit that it reduces divots. The more your bowl rotates in its initial few meters, the fewer the divots. 

A cradled bowl is less likely to be dropped during your downswing but may require a Bryant twist in your backswing to prevent the bowl from dropping at the top of its pendulum arc. 

The tendency to bend at any particular instant in the course of the bowl’s travel can be called the ’instantaneous bias’. This ‘instantaneous bias’ is a direct function of the instantaneous speed of the bowl at each point in its travel. Faster overall rolling produces less overall bending. On very wet greens your bowls effectively only swing in the last few meters, after having rapidly decelerated to where the bias can take effect. Because the initial force applied to a bowl delivered on very wet grass greens must not only overcome the natural resistance of the surface but also, as it spins around, throw off water transferred to the bowl from the grass, more weight must be provided on very wet greens and particularly when it is actually raining. That water is being thrown off the bowl is very evident from the ‘rooster tail’ that shoots up from the rolling bowl. Hence, narrow your draw for the heavier delivery on soggy grass greens and put more energy into the release.

When it is soaking wet or actually raining steadily it is better to play aggressively. It is more important than ever that you send all your bowls behind the jack. Run-through shots at the head are more likely to hit their target because the bias is much reduced by the heaviness of the green.

It is fair to say that when it is raining usually the sun is not shining. Also, when the sun disappears before the rain, it is normal for the air to rather quickly become colder.  The first raindrops quickly cool off the bowling surface. The temperature change can quickly increase the frictional force resisting the movement of the bowls and you need more weight to travel the same distance. So both the cooling of the rain and the resistance from the wetness Coming at the same time reinforce each other and make bowling heavier. On synthetic outdoor surfaces, the effect of the cooling is usually more than any resistance from the rain drops because there are no blades of grass to become heavy with beads of water on the synthetic carpet. In fact, a synthetic carpet can quickly wick away quite a lot of rainwater. It is only during or immediately after a torrential downpour that puddles appear briefly on most synthetic surfaces. In contrast, the change in temperature of a synthetic surface occurs even more rapidly than grass.

Moist but not Wet Grass

When the playing surface is just moist and does not actually have surface water droplets, the situation is different again and this is poorly understood and comes as quite a surprise to bowlers. The coefficient of rolling friction is less when the surface bears a microscopic film of water, such as when it is just moist to the touch. Less weight is required to achieve the same distance. Compounding this, when a bowl is released onto a moist surface it tends to slide at first and only then gets rolling. This sliding friction is less than the static friction encountered when a bowl lands on a completely dry surface so less energy is used up getting a bowl rolling at speed on the moist surface.

Laws of the Sport of Bowls fourth edition

6.2.6 To gain a better grip during adverse weather conditions a player can, before delivering their bowl, lift the mat, turn it over, and replace it in its original position.