Honolulu Bowling Again

 

The bowls season in Canada is well past so my wife, Tish, and I spent a fortnight in Honolulu Hawaii where we could play some bowls at the Honolulu Lawn Bowling Club. It’s not our first visit, we discovered this club, the only one in the state, last time we went to our timeshare at the nearby Hilton Hawaiian Village. The club is just a 20-minute walk or a bus ride of a few minutes from where we stay.

The club has retained all the good characteristics I wrote about on my first visit but with a refreshed cast of characters!

If you are in the area, check online for the hours they play and drop in for a few games. I have found no other place where you are adopted so quickly as part of the group. Bring a bowls towel or a club pin from your home club. They have places to display all the different locations their visitors hail from.

A unique (in my experience) detail of the playing paraphernalia is the construction of the rakes they use to gather the bowls. I have included a picture of one of them. The device has no wheels that can make divots in the playing surface. The construction is from PVC piping and PVC joints assembled to give the correct plow shape. Sliding on the green is enhanced with larger pieces of PVC pipe threaded onto the central area. There are PVC caps on the ends of the two arms of the device. The whole assembly is light. It slides easily and it has a good wide bowl-gathering opening. 

Back to Bowls in Portugal

The author of the Greenbowler blog has not been to Portugal for two winters. Finally, the pandemic has sufficiently moderated so that my wife and I feel safe to travel again. Since Spain and Portugal have access to natural gas pumped by pipeline from Algeria, energy will be more available there than in the rest of Europe. In any case, the Algarve is not particularly cold- between 14 and 19℃ during the daylight hours- and in the sunshine substantially warmer.

In the past, the clubs we play at, Valverde and Balaia, are swarming with Brits in the winter months. Will Brexit have made any difference? I’m sure the Portuguese government will have done everything it can to make all the usual visitors welcome. 

The Algarve is the best place for North Americans to go for winter bowling. Everyone in the tourist-sensitive businesses speaks English. There is fresh produce in the Saturday markets. Rental accommodation is plentiful. Internet service is good and reasonably priced. Good wine is cheaper and the restaurants aren’t crowded. 

There are very few American visitors because the weather isn’t quite warm enough for them. For Canadians, it’s good October weather.

Bowling March 31st, 2022 Toronto

 

Wow! I was able to get out for an hour of bowls practice on a synthetic outdoor green today— the 31st of March. The temperature was 16 C— remarkable for Toronto Canada. It’s a one-day wonder. The wind is gusting and tomorrow we are expecting it to snow some more.

Snow is gone except in the woods. I had to clean a rink. There were big sticks, twigs, pine cones, dead earthworms, and Canada geese shit but not too much of any one of them. 

I met the man who used to do the grass greens when we had two greens here at James Gardens. He remembers when one was removed and the single outdoor carpet installed. The lighting standards for the two greens are still in place and functioning.

I told him that the club had received a provincial grant to resurface the present green. It has outlived its’ useful playing life. The wood supporting the carpet on the banks has rotted and goose shit and dandelion fuzz has glued the carpet fibers together into something the texture of rolled clay. It's excellent for growing moss which is challenging to kill off. The carpet seams which run diagonally from corner to corner are becoming elevated as have the edges of the green next to the ditches.

No matter; we’re rolling.

Happy New Year 2021 but still No Portugal

 

Tomorrow, it is our custom to fly out of Canada to take up residence for three months in the Algarve, Portugal. There we can spend more time outside in the sunshine and lawn bowl multiple times during the week. Although Covid-19 is a serious threat in the north of Portugal, closer to Porto, our friends in the Algarve tell us that life remains remarkably normal there. Nevertheless, this year because of the lockdown in Toronto we are not prepared to travel yet. We think it is prudent to wait to see what kind of balloon in the rate of sickness may arise from the Christmas and New Year celebrations. Neither of us wants to become a burden on any health care system or to appear to be examples of poor citizenship. We will reevaluate the public health situation at the end of January. If it is sufficiently improved we will move our sojourn up to from February until the end of April.

Bowls must triumph in the end! 

In the meantime Happy 2021 New Year everybody. 

Soon to Decamp for Portugal

James Gardens LBC Toronto in Seasonal Colours

For the third winter in a row, my wife and I will fly out of Canada New Years Eve to spend the first three months of 2018 in the Portugal’s Algarve region. There we can avoid ice and snow while continuing to bowl outdoors.

Even though our location in Vilamoura is not as convenient for bowls after the Vilamoura Lawn Bowling Club closed in October 2016, we still play at Valverde LBC in Almancil, where we have very kindly been accepted as members. We also discovered last year that there are 4 bowls rinks at the Balaia Golf Resort, close to Quarteira, that are open to play for visitors. We will also give them a try this coming year since this facility is open on Tuesdays when Valverde is closed for green maintenance.

Apparently there is another close bowls green at the Praia da Oura resort in Quarteira. I have never been there. Some on-line posts seem to suggest it is quite run down. Others suggest that it is only open in the winter. Pictures show a location close to the ocean so it may be quite windy. The surface is carpet.

I have described already the many reasons lawn bowlers might prefer to go to the Algarve for the winter months. 

Thank Goodness for Valverde LBC; Different Practice Ends

Tish at Valverde LBC

Having just arrived in Vilamoura Portugal motivated by the opportunity to play lawn bowls, my wife and I learned on the second day that Vilamoura LBC is closed! The closure occurred in the middle of last October but knowing earlier would not have helped us; we had paid for our accommodation and plane tickets already.

The next closest club, Valverde LBC in Almencil, has had a sudden spike in membership bringing it past 100 members, who must all bowl on just eight rinks. This is not as bad as it might seem, because some of the membership only come in the summer months. Fortunately, because we also played at Valverde last year and since Tish has been in regular communication with their executive all during the year, we had been put on the list as regular members and so could count on a place to play. So far, in our first full week, Tish and I have bowled three times and although all the rinks were used we were still all playing the customary triples. We could accommodate sixteen more people if we went to playing fours but there does not seem to be any tradition of fours here. Similarly, I have never seen an in-club game of fours in Canada. In contrast, when the men play at Turramurra LBC in Sydney Australia it is not uncommon for more than half the rinks to be fours. 

A Warm-up Different from Practice Ends

 At Valverde, they play the first and second ends of a match with a maximum score of one for each of these two ends. This substitutes for practice ends and allows a player to scout out the 'lay of the land' going in each direction on the rink. Playing triples,this allows you to play, in each of the directions, two bowls on one hand and one bowl on the other without excessive consequences. It is important to take advantage of this opportunity. One should not struggle so hard to win these opening points that you fail to test the draw lines you are going to need throughout the match.

Blogging in 2017

                           Author and wife at Vilamoura LBC winter 2016


This New Year’s Eve, my wife and I will once again fly off to Vilamoura Portugal to spend the next three months, until the ice and snow of winter start to depart from southern Canada. I have the understanding with my wife,  that she can go anywhere she wants to travel for the winter so long as there is lawn bowling there! We are going back to the Algarve in Portugal because, for a stay of several months, it is the most economical cost when both travel  and living expenses are taken together.

Once again we will be bowling out of two bowls clubs: the Vilamoura LBC  in Vilamoura, and the Valverde LBC in Almancil. The Vilamoura club will lend you bowls. The Valverde club rents you bowls for one Euro. If you don't mind bowls with a standard draw there is plenty of choice. If you want narrow bowls, you had best bring your own. I have no problem using what is available. Both clubs are very welcoming, operate in English entirely, and have lovingly cared for greens. The temperature range beside the ocean in the Algarve region is 12-19 °C which is just jacket or sweater weather for Canada.  Precipitation is only sporadic and transient. There is rarely a day with persistent all day rain.

 I will be taking my computer with me so that I can continue my blogging from Portugal. Talk to you all from there starting in January.  

My Conclusion: Canadians Should Bowl in Portugal

On Saturday my wife and I leave Portugal to go home to Toronto to await the Canadian spring. We have been here since the beginning of January. We rented a condo in Vilamoura in the Algarve- the southernmost region, on the ocean. We have played regularly at both the Vilamoura and Valverde lawn bowling clubs. Even though people who have spent more than ten winters here say that 2016 has been colder than normal, we can testify that bowlers who are comfortable in Canada playing in the early weeks of May or the beginning of October will find Portugal acceptable.

There are many properties for rent during these months and you shouldn’t have to pay more than 700-800 Euros per month with heat, water, electricity and internet access all included. It is really a renters market during these winter months. If you want to rent a car, get something on-line for a week or two when you just arrive and then investigate further when you get here. The prices quoted on=line are ridiculously high compared to what you can get with a bit of local help. When you are in Portugal, your landlord or people at the bowling club can connect you to better deals. Once again it is a renters market during these months. There will be plenty of cars available.

Food is cheap and restaurant food is great value. The supermarkets devote aisle upon aisle to Portuguese wines at amazing prices. Water is almost as expensive as wine!  Vilamoura has public bicycles at many locations. Ask your landlord to purchase cards to access the system and put money on them for you. I used one of these bicycles to travel from our condo to Vilamoura LBC, whenever my wife had other plans for the day.

In the Algarve, you absolutely don’t need to know any Portuguese language. Everyone you are likely to interact with speaks English- good English. At the bowling clubs you will be unlikely even to hear Portuguese or meet anyone who is Portuguese. English, Scots, Irish plenty- all the accents. The bowling competition is also quality. You won’t meet many novices here. If you also play golf well then you are truly in heaven. Actually Vilamoura devotes more space to golf courses than anything else. There are all kinds of places that rent clubs- even the first shop you see arriving at the Faro airport.

Finally you can use your location in Portugal to travel around; however, get a European GPS and program it not to use the toll roads. These government gouging devices are the relatively most expensive thing you will find in Portugal.

My wife and I found that the cost of the return flights Canada-Portugal-Canada was easily recovered from the much lower cost of everything else when compared to going to the southern USA so long as you stay 2-3 months. We have already arranged our accommodation to winter 2017.     

Local Bowls Culture in Portugal

So far I find that the issue of who will take the mat in the opening end is always decided by choosing ‘big’ or ‘little’ from the roll of a bowl. In Canada and Australia, more often there is a coin toss.  Furthermore, the winner here always seems to take the mat. There is no spoken choice; it is just assumed by both sides. This may be because I am playing with people who are all playing on their home green, so they may simply know the grass and want to be first onto the jack. The observation so far is only based on behaviour at the Vilamoura and Valverde LBCs.

Nevertheless, it is startlingly different from practice in Canada where the winner of the usual coin toss almost always gives the mat away and chooses to have skip’s last bowl in the end. The feeling in Canada is also that there is an advantage in seeing the opposition’s opening delivery before having to grass your own bowl.

In the matter of collecting the bowls after an end, practice is not uniform between Valverde and Vilamoura. At Valverde they put out and use rakes like in Canada. At Vilamoura players help to kick the bowls back behind the mat placement.

Lawn Bowls at Valverde LBC Portugal

My wife, Tish, and I bowled yesterday at the Valverde lawn bowls club in southern Portugal. The green is a dense grass cut nice and short with no discolorations or bare spots. If you took a picture from eye level looking down, you would not be able to tell whether it was a rug or grass. All the grass blades are packed tight standing straight up.  Even at 10:30AM it is nearly dry. I did not use my bowls cloth after the first few ends.

The game was open triples on two rinks and open pairs on two rinks; however, every six ends the teams, the team positions, the opponents and the rinks were changed. Everyone had their own score card and the individual best plus/minuses won cash prizes after three rounds. An interesting variant was that in the first two ends of the first mini-game the maximum score was 1. In this way no trial ends were needed. This format is played at Valverde every Friday and it affords the maximum opportunity for everybody to meet on the green.  I played skip twice and lead once. I was +5 on the day. My performance in the first match which we lost with me skipping put me out of the money. Consistency is everything in bowls!

A point of contention arose during one of the mini-games. My lead delivered a bowl that came to rest leaning in a standing position against the jack. I told my skip opposite that I was nominating that bowl as a toucher since I wouldn’t dare try to mark it because it could fall and push away the jack. As we changed positions and the skips were going to the mat, the opposing lead said that this was not correct nomination. When I said that it was, she declared “Perhaps according to your rules” or something to that effect.

No harm was done to me although I apologized to the opposing skip saying that I was afraid I had upset her. Anyway the rule from Crystal Mark Third Edition of the Laws of World Bowls reads:

15.2 If, in the opinion of either skip or opponent or the marker, a toucher comes to rest in a position in which marking it would be likely to move the bowl or alter the head, the bowl must not be marked but nominated as a toucher instead.

15.3 If, before the next delivered bowl comes to rest or, in the case of the last bowl of an end, before a period of 30 seconds that applies under law 23.1, a bowl is neither marked nor nominated, it is no longer a toucher.

This club is owned by its members and they say, justifiably, that it is the friendliest bowling club. A club member was immediately into the parking lot to greet us and show us around when we first found the place and the secretary of the club had even helped to find us suitable accommodation when we contacted her over the internet before we left for Portugal!

Here they do use rakes to collect the bowls. The bowls available for visitors are of more recent vintage than those on offer at Vilamoura LBC and they are carefully arranged according to size while those at Vilamoura were totally haphazard. The Valverde bowls for the most part have grips while Vilamoura’s mostly do not.

Valverde has a restaurant right next to it where I expect food and drinks would be available. When we arrived this was closed since January is a slow month for tourists. Vilamoura has a bar in the tiny club house with plenty of tables and chairs on the patio next to one of the two greens. Vilamoura has more parking and that parking is more accessible.

Both these clubs are thoroughly English. While on the greens you will not think you are in a foreign language country. If you are leaving winter behind for several months I suspect Portugal is better value than the southern United States. I will say more after I give the USA a winter trial some other year. 

First Club Game at Vilamoura LBC

Tuesday January 13^th I played my first game since the end of the playing season in Canada. Twenty three club members and I showed upon by 1:30PM so that we were able to play three rinks of fours. I played lead and a reasonable number of my bowls survived to contribute to the score. I had practiced for a couple of hours on two previous days so I was able to at least be behind the jack most of the time when I wasn’t right on it. My team had the second best performance on the day and each team member got to choose a bottle of wine. I took a Portuguese red on the theory that the local organizers would make a better choice than my own random selection from the store.  I had a few glasses at supper and was not disappointed!

In the game the similarities with Canada were:

·         There is no center line

·         Most bowlers automatically place the mat at the two meter line

·         The green  was  about the same speed

·         There are no practice ends

·         Participants are very friendly and welcoming

The differences were:

·         The bowls are kicked back to a position behind the mat

·         It is assumed that the mat is going to be placed at 2 meters by          the team

·         Participants do not faithfully were their name tags

·         Participants do wear their club shirts

·         except for one set all the bowls used were black

·         most of the sets of bowls were Taylor Lignoids but they didn’t        play any wider than my Vector VS play on grass at home; that          is my aim point was usually around the boundary marker

·         the match was 18 ends (but the air temperature was only 16 C)

A very thankful difference from Canada was that the clubhouse did have a bar so we were able to have some lubricated socializing after the match!

Going Overseas to Bowl

The last month of the year is dribbling away. In Canada, the weather is getting near zero Celsius. Soon there will be snow in Toronto but New Year’s Eve my wife and I will fly away to Portugal where we will get the chance to lawn bowl at the Valverde and Vilamoura lawn bowling clubs in the state of Algarve.  We will stay until the end of March. The average daily temperature there is only between 9°C and 16°C, but temperatures in the sun are reported to be in the low twenties. This can’t match the 30-40 degrees in Australia at the same time of year but for hearty Canucks it will be just fine! We are told we will meet a lot of Brits in spring training for the 2016 English outdoor bowls season and because the area depends so much on tourism not knowing Portuguese will be no problem.
I’m already champing at the bit. I would be lost in retirement without bowls.

Playing Bowls in Honolulu: Leads as Greenskeepers’ Assistants

 On my way home to Canada, after avoiding any winter weather in Australia, my wife and I played bowls at the Honolulu Lawn Bowling Club.  This is the only lawn bowling green in Hawaii. It was built by Australian troops during the war. It fell into disrepair afterward, was rehabilitated, and is now maintained by its present membership, who total about 35 souls. The club is within walking distance of the Hilton Hawaiian Village resort where we were staying.  Apparently, many visitors come for a game from the tourist sites. There is play on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday but see their website for current details. We were not the only visitors. There is a large selection of bowls to borrow and a friendly atmosphere.

As you might imagine keeping up a natural grass green with only a small group of player-volunteers is a challenge and I could see that not all the rinks were playable at one time. This reminded me of something very important for novice bowlers to remember. Novices very often are lead bowlers and they have the freedom(at least within 3 or 4 meters) to decide where to place the mat. Leads should choose the position of the mat with respect for the condition of the rink. They are the most important assistants to the greenskeeper because they can keep the heavy traffic away from areas where the grass needs time to recover. Most often this is the area two meters out from the back ditch where so many players think the mat must be placed!

Try moving the mat five meters up the rink. When the mat has been centered with the help of your skip, on the green mark the position of the front center of the mat with chalk. That way you will be putting your mat down where there is less wear and tear while still making it quick to center the mat at the same place again and get on with the next end.

Age is No Barrier Bowling in Burleigh Heads

On Saturday January 3^rd I bowled in Burleigh Heads, Australia, against a triples team whose lead was 97 years old. He was terrific. He used a bowling arm but he had no problem getting around for more than three hours on the green. I was playing second. Our best bowler was leading, but even so invariably by the time I came up to bowl, the head was seriously against us. I think we score three points in the entire match while several times they scored five in a single end. Their second told me, jokingly, I think, “We pay him to play with us.” It’s wonderful to see how lawn bowls can keep us elders active. Another fellow on this same day surprised me,  telling me. “Three days ago I was in hospital. I’m 92, you know, and I thought it was a heart attack but it was just vertigo so here I am.”

I chose lawn bowls because I wanted to participate until 90. I think I should choose a more challenging target!

Back at Turramurra LBC

I was playing fours Wednesday at Turramurra. I was having difficulty with the weight of my deliveries. Coach reminded me at tea time to keep my non-bowling hand on my knee. “It is flying all over the place.” I wasn’t aware of it. Repairing my form I played much more consistently in the second half.

The next day when I was practicing at the rollup another coach told me not to follow through with my hand as much. “It should not rise above your knee or more than an angle of 45 degrees from the horizontal.” Following this advice I was able to control my weight much better. I practiced bowling alternately to jacks at different lengths. After a few thousand more practice bowls this will become automatic also!!

Lawn Bowl Delivery Instruction at Turramurra

This novice bowler has taken advantage of staying for the winter, within 500 meters of the Turramurra Lawn Bowling Club, in Sydney Australia to receive coaching on my bowling delivery.

My First Lesson

The most fundamental recommended change was not to crouch at the beginning of delivery but to stand with my legs straight but with my trunk slightly bent forward at the waist. This will pay off, it was explained to me, not so much now when I am still quite physically fit, but as I grow older, when I will not need to change my delivery to take into consideration increasing infirmities. Starting the delivery without crouching is the least stressful style.

A second significant observation of the coach was that too often my nonbowling arm ends up out in the air rather than resting consistently on the knee of the advancing leg. So now, for a non-crouch delivery, the non-bowling hand starts out with the fingers resting lightly at about the bottom of my pocket on the thigh of the leg that will step forward and ends up resting lightly on the knee of that forward leg.

The third significant change relates to the placement of my feet before delivery. Instead of standing with feet essentially together, it was advocated that my advancing foot should begin one-half a shoe length forward of my anchor foot. When I tried this combined with an upright starting stance, I  found that this caused almost all my weight to remain on my anchor foot throughout the delivery, automatically, while before I had to make a conscious effort to keep my weight predominantly on this foot; thus, this new modification again simplified my delivery.

I had seen in bowling videos on U-tube that many top bowlers tuck the knee of their anchor leg in behind the heel of their advancing leg when they deliver. I was not finding this necessary and so I asked the coach why this happened. He explained that I was not doing it because I was stepping forward parallel to the aim line rather than stepping more towards the aim line; that is directly in front of my anchor foot. If I were to step more towards the aim line according to theory my eyes would be directly over the aim line and I would improve the proportion of bowls passing cleanly through my stare point.

My Second Lesson 

I had the good fortune to have another lesson from a different teacher, Geoff Hamilton, who is the club champion and the CEO of the Turramurra Lawn Bowling Club. In my second lesson, my instructor said that he had been watching me practicing in a roll-up. His main concern was that I was still in too much of a crouch. He wanted me to stand up straight when I stepped onto the mat with my feet positioned as previously described but with a slight flexing of the knees and the weight on the balls of my feet so that I inclined slightly forward. (I will continue to try to keep most of my weight on my anchor foot.) He again emphasized that the goal was to have a delivery that would not need to change as I aged and acquired more aches and pains.

His next criticism was that after releasing the bowl I stepped back onto the mat rather than continuing to move my weight forward with the shot. He said that I should instead draw up my anchor foot so that I would end up standing with both feet out in front of the mat. He stated emphatically that on fast greens consistent weight transfer would be essential for controlling the momentum and hence length of my shots.

The third criticism was that I was flailing in the air with my free hand rather than sliding it down to rest on my advancing knee. After the bowl was released and traveling down the rink was the time to check (i) whether my delivering arm was raised no higher than my advancing knee (ii) that my anchor knee was just behind my advancing foot and (iii) that my non-bowling hand was resting on my knee. Even so, the number one job, once the bowl was released, was to notice whether the stare point was being hit and if not by how much and in which direction the miss occurred so it could be correlated with the final bowl position.

Bowls at Turramurra, Australia

The novice bowling author is on an extended holiday in Sydney Australia until March.

The grass is faster here than on the synthetic surface at James Garden and much, much faster than the grass at Willowdale, but this is the least of the differences in play between here and Toronto. In Australia, the pair’s game is played with the leads opening with two bowls each, then the skips deliver two bowls; then the leads return to the mat and deliver their last two bowls, and finally the skips come back and grass their last two bowls. Thus, there is twice as much walking back and forth on the rink as in Canada.

One might think the game would proceed more slowly but it actually goes faster because, unlike in Canada, each rink has a marked center line that extends out from the two-meter T for eight meters at each end. This eliminates any signaling between the leads and skips concerning the centering either of the mat or the jack before the beginning of each end.

The presence of the marked center line creates several differences in how play usually evolves. In Canada, because of the problem centering the mat if it is moved up the green, most ends end up being played with bowls delivered from the 2-meter mark or no more than 4 feet further up the green. At Turramurra, and perhaps elsewhere in Australia, there is less tactical play with changes to the distance the jack is delivered and much more involving the location of the mat. In the first game I played in Australia, (social not competitive) both skips left it pretty well up to the leads to decide on the placement of the mat and the distance that the jack was delivered. In Canada, even in a social game, play would pause until the skip in possession of the mat came down the rink to the place where the jack was supposed to be delivered. The skip expects or more often just hopes the lead will deliver the jack close to where (s)he stands. The skip I played with simply waited near the forward ditch for the mat to be placed and jack to be tossed down seemingly at my discretion. Then they quickly moved the jack onto the center line for the first lead bowl.

At Turramurra, and perhaps in all of Australia, players do not use bowl rakes to gather the bowls when the end is over but the bowls are kicked back to behind the mat placement for the next end. In Canada as far as I have seen, rakes are used except for singles matches. As a consequence, in Australia, it seems that for the convenience of the bowlers, the mat is rarely placed at the 2-meter line, but almost always at least 4 meters more up the rink. Since very often the previous head might be as far as 10 meters from the forward ditch if the mat for the coming end is now placed 6 meters from the ditch, the bowls only need to be kicked a short distance. If the mat were placed at the 2-meter mark, the bowls would need to be kicked inconveniently far and there would be an increased chance that a bowl would end up gathering some sand in the ditch before it could be properly marshaled.

There is another reason that moving the mat might be discouraged by Canadian conditions of play. Ground sheets are used much more in Canada than in Australia. From reading the comments written by Australians on the blog, Julian Haynes Bowls, many feel that if conditions require ground sheets, play should be canceled. This is not the case in Canada.  In many places in Canada, the weather is quite variable throughout the bowls season. There are more days when it rains at least some of the time. Furthermore, the season, which is only from May to October to begin with, is extended by using ground sheets more toward the end of the season as the weather deteriorates. There also seems to be much heavier morning dew, at least in the Toronto area where I am from, and it doesn’t ‘burn off ‘ until about 10:30AM which is well after most tournaments have begun. According to the World Bowls Crystal Mark Second Edition rules, ground sheets are placed on each rink by the groundskeeper if in his opinion required and cannot be moved or removed except by agreement from the groundskeeper. Moreover, the rules further  state that the mat must remain placed with its front edge aligned with the back edge of the ground sheet. As a result, groundsheets take mat movements out of the game.

With a marked center line, the greater movement of the mat has a significant effect on determining the aim line. In Canada, some choose the aim line by selecting a particular distinct point on or beyond the forward bank and creating an imaginary aiming line that passes through that point; then carefully looking back along that line they find a stare point conveniently in front of the mat. The difficulty with this method is that the aiming line needs to be changed whenever the mat is moved significantly forward or back. Since significant mat movement is rarer in a Canadian social game, this is not a burden. In Australia, such changes in mat placement are more the rule than the exception, so, bowlers that use the above method are handicapped. At the same time, players who apply a method based on bowling at a fixed angle to the centerline are aided by the existence of a clearly marked center line. The simplest method of choosing the proper line for delivering bowls to the jack in Australia is by bowling at the correct angle off the center line because that angle is not changed when the mat position is varied!   All your attention can be directed at getting the correct weight for your shots.

Cultural Aspects of the Game

At the Turramurra Bowling Club in Sydney Australia many more men are bowling than women, while at James Gardens in Toronto, there are more ladies than gents. Mixed bowling is the most common bowls game in Canada but it seems that the men far outnumber the ladies at Turramurra. Even more noteworthy is the extent to which men and women do not mix down under. Ladies play on ladies' days and hardly make an appearance at the club at other times. This may be connected with the fact that bowling clubs in Australia typically have a bar and some slot machines, but this is just a tentative hypothesis. There are also hints that the men prefer male-only games because they can use rougher language, drive more often, and perhaps drink more freely afterward.

It appears that bowls is much more expensive to play here in Australia.  If you want to play often you must play in an organized game that costs between $15-20 per player. This outlay includes some lunch, and coffee or tea perhaps a couple of times during the day. For the men, there is also the expense of a traditional alcoholic beverage for yourself and your opposite number after the contest. This is not to say that these extras do not have value but just that they are not optional. They are inherent aspects of the entertainment package. In Canada, for regular weekly scheduled in-house games, if you want food you bring a lunch, and tea and coffee are supplied by the club. Since almost all clubs are unlicensed, there is simply no opportunity to imbibe on the premises. You can pay $0.50 for a soft drink from the club frig or drink from the water fountain. Canadian bowls clubs more closely resemble an outdoor skating shack; the Australian bowls club is more like a golf country club!

Thanks to the Likas Lawn Bowling Complex in Sabah, Malaysia

To avoid the winter ice and snow of Canada, I spent January through March of 2013 in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia.  This is in the tropics on the island of Borneo in what we westerners used to call the East Indies. Malaysia has a big program teaching lawn bowling to young people and I witnessed the skill of these students while playing at the Likas Lawn Bowling Complex in Kota Kinabalu. I was welcomed enthusiastically to play at this facility and for this I would like to particularly thank the President, Ladislaus Maluda, who answered my questions in advance by e-mail  and facilitated my introductions to players once there.

The Likas facility has two greens. They were both damaged by flooding. One green has been completely replaced and newly it reopened in February while I was there. To my surprise the surface is a sand-packed synthetic plastic material  exactly  like that at my Canadian home club,  James Gardens, in West Toronto.

 There are differences in the greens. At Likas, the center lines of  the rinks are permanently marked. This has the advantage that it speeds up the placement of the mat and the jack. The disadvantage is that as the rinks wear with heavy use some depressions may form along the center line where there will be more foot traffic. When the rinks are not marked, they can be moved from side-to-side by shifting the rink boundary markers to give more even wear.

A difference in the progress of play is that in all my time at Likas I never saw a rake. Players pick up their bowls or kick them back preparatory to playing the next end.

I also noticed a difference in the social aspect of the game. In friendly play, even when there are unused rinks available, it seems tobe standard for a singles game to morph into a pairs game and then to morph again into a triples contest as new players arrive at the club. This emphasizes the casual friendly nature of play and gives a new player a chance to meet everyone faster.
I
t seems that everywhere in the world, lawn bowlers are the most welcoming people around!  

Local Cultural Aspects of Lawn Bowling

As a novice first-year bowler with aspirations, I notice how regular club players bowl and still have some knowledge of the practices of champion bowlers. My club has many novice bowlers and a solid contingent of rather experienced substantially older bowlers.

There is a big difference between common practices and best practices. In an entire summer of social and tournament bowling on only a handful of occasions have I seen a skip call for the lead to move the mat from a standard position 6 feet from the rear ditch. Also, there is a stormy, dark, silent displeasure displayed towards anyone who drives to break up a head or blank an end. In fact, in the province of Ontario in Canada where I bowl, there is a regional rule that a team can only blank one end. There is a one-shot penalty for every repeat. If you blank an end on a hot day, the reaction is not silent. Finally, foot faulting is ignored even at the club tournament level. When I mentioned chronic foot faulting to my skip I was cautioned that it would be poor form to even mention it.