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!