The Benefits of First Bowl Behind the Jack at Lawn Bowls

 

Your first bowl in every end is the most difficult as regards length. For that reason, one should err on the side of putting it consistently behind the jack. For some reason, it seems to be easier to take a bit of weight off so that your subsequent deliveries are on the jack. At the same time that first back bowl provides useful options throughout the end. In a YouTube match, Mark Armstrong against Harry Coleman at Victoria, Australia, Harry delivers every first bowl except one behind the jack in his 21-up victory 

[ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2xXj21lHYk&t=4958s ].

About Bowling Round the Clock at Lawn Bowls

‘Bowling round the clock’ means delivering one’s bowl either always forehand or always backhand. This results in bowling one side of the rink for the odd ends and the other side of the rink for the even ends.

Many lawn bowls instruction or coaching materials discourage this practice. For example:

Do not play “around the clock”, …. the variation does not allow the greatest consistency, and the team will be disadvantaged, and head-building will be adversely affected.

After the first two or three ends, choose the side of the rink that is playing evenly in pace and green, and thus gain a tactical advantage over an opponent who bowls “around the clock”.

It is not recommended to bowl “around the clock”….  as the grass is usually different on each side and so too can be the pace.

You should avoid playing “around the clock,” …. because this promotes inconsistency as you are effectively playing both sides instead of the most favorable one.

 

None of this makes any sense at all to me. A lawn bowling rink might be tilted or flat. It might play to an even weight on both sides or be different in this respect. It might have ridges that disturb bowls in some locations and not others. But whatever its characteristics, your starting assumption should always be that for odd ends it will play in some characteristic fashion and for even ends in another characteristic fashion.  You will be better off to take as your starting hypothesis that you are playing on two separate rinks; one in a first direction and a second in the second direction.

Your proper challenge is to find, as quickly as possible, which side is best for the odd ends and which side is best for the even ends. Then, whether it results in playing one side of the rink preponderantly or playing ‘round the clock’ more often, that should become your tactical choice. 

 

What a Left-handed Lawn Bowler Should Consider

A left-handed lawn bowler has some advantages. Such person mostly competes against right-handed opposition. Right-handed players much less frequently face a left-handed bowler. For the left-handed player, the situation is regular. For the right-hander facing a left-hander is not the 

norm. This has at least two strategic implications.

First: when the left-hander is required to bowl before a right-handed opponent, at the beginning of a game on an unfamiliar rink or at an unfamiliar length during a match, he or she can stand on the mat so that the opponent cannot follow the same line. To do this, the left-handed bowler takes a position at the left-most edge of the mat so that the delivery line passes through the back left corner of the mat for a forehand and over the front left corner for a backhand. These positions are illustrated in the figure above.

 Second: if a right-handed opponent delivers a back-hand draw and encounters a run in the green that causes that bowl to back-up, The left-handed bowler delivering a fore-hand (for that bowler) is likely to suffer the same fate because the handed-bowler will be delivering a bowl most likely wider than the opponent’s and that bowl is likely to encounter the same ridge in the green (the left side of the top figure). There is, therefore, a strong incentive to change hands.

If it is a forehand that the right-handed opponent has delivered and that has backed up, the left-handed bowler can be somewhat less worried. Because the left-hander’s bowl can be delivered closer to the centre-line, it is less likely to get caught on the outside of the ridge and directed away from its normal path (the right side of my topmost figure). There is still some risk to staying on the same hand, but it is less. That bowl may be able to draw inside the ridge.

Notice that a ridge only causes a problem in the portion of the rink where a bowl is slowing down. Ridges in the portion of a rink closest to the mat do not appreciably change the path of a bowl because, at the outset of its travel, a bowl has enough momentum to push across a ridge with little distortion of its path. It is when a bowl is slowing down and curving in towards the jack that a ridge can cause a substantial disturbance.