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.