The Strategy of Really Long Ends at Lawn Bowls

In the northern hemisphere, on slow rinks, the most frequently adopted strategy in lawn bowling contests is to deliver very long jacks when the opposing team seems to prefer something shorter. 

Even so many bowlers underestimate the effectiveness of this strategy because they do not realize how dramatically the average bowler’s line control falls off as the jack length increases. As jack length trends towards full length each additional meter of length is responsible for a greater and greater decline in accuracy. 

That is to say, many bowlers underestimate the significance of jack length because they confuse ‘longish ends’ with ‘really long ends’. I would characterize ‘really long ends’ as being only those within 1 meter or less of full length (T to T).  It is on these ‘really long ends’ that the performance of many bowlers falls off precipitously.

“Aha,” you may say, “but to gain the advantage you claim, your lead must be able to consistently deliver these ‘really long jacks.’ “

“Well,” I say, “practice it.”

 Delivering a small white ball to within 3 meters of the forward ditch without any substantial need for line control is really not very hard for anyone. Besides, all that happens if your side does ditch the jack is that the other side gets their chance, and from what I have seen they don’t pay much attention to their delivery at all!

So the situation is this. You get a chance to deliver the jack for a ‘really long end’ for which your side has trained or is naturally advantaged. If you succeed in getting the jack you desire, you are odds on to win the end and furthermore you retain the jack. On the other hand, if your side makes a mistake rolling the jack it suffers no significant penalty!

Where can you find odds like that?

When Your In-Match Performance Starts to Crumble— Do This

Suppose you are competing in a lawn bowling competition and doing fine when suddenly both your line control and weight control collapse all at once. What has happened? What should you do?

Don’t just push on, bear down, and try to concentrate harder mentally. This is a good way to continue losing— end after end. That is what I did last week. 

Don’t start telling yourself that you just don’t know how to bowl and you should make a mental note to give up the game. No. You can play well. You were doing so just a few ends ago!

It is my experience that when your game just suddenly collapses, it is one of two things. Either (i) you have suddenly made a small change in your delivery motion or (ii) you have started leaving out steps in your predelivery routine.

I have already written blogs about the frequent mistake that I fall into  respecting delivery motion. For me, that mistake is failing to get my forward-stepping foot firmly grounded before I start my bowling arm’s swing forward.

Instead, when both weight control and line control both fail suddenly in the middle of a match, the problem probably relates to a deviation in your pre-delivery routine.

The first thing to do is to slow everything down. Step off the mat. Signal that you need more information from the skip. Take off your jacket. Put on your jacket. Do something to give yourself time to mentally review all the individual items that are part of your pre-delivery routine. Then slowly and methodically perform those individual steps.

For the purpose of example, I will list all the steps in my pre-delivery routine:

 standing about a meter behind the mat, I receive any instructions from the person controlling the head

I identify an immovable object on or behind the forward bank that will mark one end of my imaginary aim-line

I adjust my position depending upon the shot (forehand or backhand or drive) so that I am standing on the aim line

I check my bias

assuming a semi-squatting position (a la David Bryant) I look along the imaginary aim line that runs to the preselected object at the forward ditch and I pick a point on my aim line to be my stare point 

I adopt the Shooter’s stance with my feet

I grip the bowl comfortably with my regular grip

I adjust the elevation my body so my non-bowling hand can rest comfortably on the knee of my stepping leg

I visualize the path of my bowl as it travels to its planned finishing point 

Waggling my bowling arm I make slight swinging motions along and over my aim line

I relax the muscles in my bowling arm

With my eyes stare fixedly at my stare point

With my mind I concentrate on drawing my bowling arm back along and over my aim line

As you can see my predelivery routine is rather extensive. Perhaps that is why I am regarded as an annoyingly slow bowler. Perhaps you can find other better advice that can simplify and accelerate your preparation. I can’t help there. What I can say is that doing this recalibration, I have been able to get back into the groove required for consistent good bowling!

Do Average Lawn Bowlers Frequently Forget their Proper Aim Lines?

 

In one of my old blogs on this Greenbowler site, I admitted that in tournaments I often keep a business card in my pocket, and on the back of it I record my aim points on the forward banks for forehand and backhand deliveries in both directions. The reason-- too often I  have difficulty remembering these aim lines during a contest.

I thought perhaps that this was a unique failing of mine but a situation arose today playing in a roll-up at Valverde LBC that seemed to increase the likelihood that others might be encountering the same forgetfulness.

We were playing on a rink that quite remarkably had very narrow aim lines on both the forehand and the backhand for the   odd-numbered ends. While normally on the Valverde green aim lines running to the boundary markers on each side of the rink are approximately correct, on this rink in one of the directions the aim angle was 1/2 that. Since all the players were quite competent it was quite apparent whenever someone forgot the proper aim line and reverted to the more regular target- the boundary markers. When anyone did that, their bowl finished glaringly wide.

What I observed was that when players delivered shots that they clearly intended to draw to the jack, many of these, from a plurality of the different players, finished very wide indicating that those people had not remembered that this rink was distinctly narrow on both hands.

My conclusion is that more than just I might benefit from some jotting on a slip of paper in their pocket reminding them of the correct aim lines- forehand and backhand. 

Speed of Play as a Strategic Consideration at Lawn Bowls

When they are in serious competition, the Greenbowler blog has consistently advised readers to use variations in jack length and mat position in their tactical and strategic planning. But it appears there is another variable that I haven’t presented adequately. The reason was I just didn’t consider it that important. When other literature mentioned it, I discounted those claims.

Today, at Valverde LBC, I played a 21-up singles match in which my opponent acknowledged to me after the match that what I had discounted up ’til now was what seriously upset his game- more than any other element. At the same time, he sportingly acknowledged that the practice was completely within the rules.

What had happened was this. My strategy, whenever I had the mat, was to never play an end from the 2 meter line; and never play two ends in succession from the same mat position; but almost always play either short or medium-length jacks. I managed to execute this plan but according to my opponent, the reason it worked was that it slowed the game down “more than any game I have ever played.”

I have no doubt that his observation was truthful. Even in a game where every end is played without the mat shifting off either T, I am a slower player; and that is when only 4 stare points and a single weight need to be identified and remembered. So, a slow delivery added together with constant moving and centering the mat (he nearly always placed the mat back as far as possible and delivered long jacks ) and a closely matched competition in a 21-up match would all conspire to draw it out. 

The take-home lesson I came to learn from the match was that steadily playing a different pace of game can upset an opponent’s concentration far more than I would ever have imagined. That slowing of play can substantially and fairly be achieved with mat movement.