Novice Lawn Bowlers, who show initiative, must learn everything faster

Beginning lawn bowlers play lead. Novice lawn bowlers, at most Canadian clubs, find that if they show significant improvement they are rapidly moved higher on the tag board and end up playing other positions. At James Gardens, my home club in Toronto Canada for example, my wife is now often slotted into club tournaments as vice, even though she is only in her second year bowling. In club pick-up games I am now usually made a skip, even though I am only bowling for my third year. So, in actual practice, novice players must be able to make a workable go at all the shots called for in all the positions.

Additionally, they need a clear understanding of the duties of all the team positions and a fair grasp of the most frequently applicable rules of the game. All that is OK with me. Novice bowlers who show the more initiative just need to understand, they are in the accelerated program!

When You Just Don’t Hit Your Stare Point

I just finished a friendly pick-up game where I bowled very badly. The question the result elicits is “What should you check immediately if you are not hitting your stare point?”

For me the most likely suspects are:

1)           I am not setting my advancing foot on the ground before beginning the forward sweep of my bowling arm.

2)           I am drawing my bowling arm back too quickly so that it does not go back along the aim line.

P.S.

In the same game, I was playing against a seasoned bowler who always plays lead. He sets the mat at the 2-meter mark and sends the jack to within two meters of the ditch. With such groove bowlers, it is important to take them away from their game. Set the mat anywhere except the standard two meters from the back ditch.

Getting to Full Length on Slow Greens

My wife, Tish, and I were practicing bowling to long jacks on the heavy grass greens at the Willowdale Lawn Bowling Club in Toronto Canada. The green was still slightly moist and it had not been cut for a few days because the mower had broken down. Tish, who is slight of build but quite strong, could not get her bowl from a mat at the 2 meter mark up to a jack two meters from the front ditch. I had read somewhere that one could add extra length by flicking one’s fingers to provide some rotational velocity to the bowl just as it left one’s hand. According to physics, this should add length because a bowl normally delivered will partially slide at the outset and only after an instant more acquire enough angular velocity to roll properly. While it is sliding the bowl is subject to a higher resistance than when it rolls; therefore, if the bowl can be made to roll from the outset it should travel further.

When Tish tried this immediately her deliveries were about four meters longer. She was able to bowl the full length of the rink. The effect was dramatic!

I don’t think this finger flicking should be incorporated as part of a regular delivery because it seems the extent of the flick would be hard to keep constant, but it certainly seems to help when there appears no other way to add length.

Maple Key Obstacles on the Bowling Green

This week, the James Garden lawn bowling club’s synthetic green is covered with last year’s maple seeds (called keys) that the swirling wind has blown all over the surface from the nearby park trees.

Maple keys have a thin flat wing portion that lies flat on the ground and will not disturb the path of a bowl, but each seed also has a hard round part, like a little ball bearing, that will not roll but can distinctly change the path of a lawn bowl and can stop it dead when the bowl has slowed down.


Although these seeds can be swept up, more keep blowing in if there is a wind, and those already on the green keep moving from one place to another. These add an extra obstacle to competitive bowling. Some people say that bad greens are just as bad for everybody but this is not true. Bad greens penalize better players more. The more random luck that is introduced, the more likely the poorer team is to win a match.

In the presence of maple keys littering your rink the best strategy is to throw short jacks and drive at the jack if you get down several bowls in an end. The maple keys don’t throw off fast moving drives to the same extent and if you try to draw to save there is a good chance your bowl could be sent off course by one of these seeds.  

Squatting Helps Choosing Your Stare Point in Lawn Bowls

I have found that choosing a stare point about 5 meters in advance of the front edge of the mat works best for me. When helping to instruct beginners, I often make a chalk mark that far out at approximately the correct angle for their bowls’ bias. This way the beginner gets a clearer idea of whether (s)he is properly controlling their delivery angle.

The rest of us must struggle to identify slight imperfections in the grass or carpet to stare at. I have found recently that squatting on the mat while looking down at the far bank helps me choose a stare point that is truly on the aim line. There is a bonus. After I stand up and assume my erect delivery stance, all this time holding that stare point, I deliver my bowl more quickly, because the longer I have to focus on my stare point the more likely my view of it will slip! As a consequence, I bowl better and faster.

Any Delivery Can Work So Long as it is Reproducible

At a time of year when club mentors for new bowlers are teaching the elements of the draw shot, we should be sensitive to the fact that, because of minor frailties, many of the new bowlers cannot deliver from the athletic position. The previous post suggests the different possibilities that bowlers could adopt. To emphasize the point that any delivery can give extraordinary results, so long as it can be reproduced exactly I direct readers to a video that shows  Ian (Tails) Taylor bowling at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lfeYIPR_NI. No-one will have a delivery more complicated and more difficult to reproduce than this. So remember: the reason coaches teach what they do is because what we teach are the simplest deliveries and these are the easiest to groove into a good habit. 

Teaching New Lawn Bowlers

May is the start of the lawn bowling season in Canada. All clubs try at this time of year to interest new people to become members and take up the sport. I started participating after attending an Open House at James Gardens LBC in May 2012. I help out with the mentoring and coaching at this same club as my volunteering contribution to the maintenance of the sport.

The core of the instruction is trying to give new bowlers sufficient skill delivering a draw shot that they can become involved in social bowling as a lead. What I have noticed is that our teaching methods have not changed to keep pace with the modern technologies that are widely available to our students. Because lawn bowling instruction videos are now available via the internet, teachers at the club level should be taking advantage of them. Different styles of delivery are taught and a new bowler can be directed to a bowling style  consistent with his or her physical condition, taking into account  slight disabilities such as arthritic hands, bad knees or bad backs. There are many different deliveries: the athletic delivery, the crouch delivery, the semi-crouch, the Scotttish runner and the South African. Instead of trying to teach everyone the athletic delivery, we should be showing people such videos illustrating the different styles and work with them to select the most appropriate. The different styles are well illustrated for example by the great bowler Tony Alcock at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilifGJBDo5U.
After showing them what is available, we club mentors can let the newcomers try to imitate a selected delivery on our green. I think we will get many more people interested in lawn bowls if they can choose a delivery that is not a strain on their natural capabilities.

Don’t give Up On Your Aim Line Just Because One Bowl Misfires

Part of my practice routine is to bowl between two chalk marks separated by a space the diameter of a jack. These two marks are placed 5 meters in advance of the front edge of the mat.

 This way I get unambiguous visual feedback about how precise my control of line is. But, when I was doing this, I discovered a curious thing. Sometimes my line is right-on-the-money but still the bowl ends up very far away from the resting place of all the other practice bowls delivered before and after the suspect one. If I was in a competition, I might take this bad outcome from a single delivery as evidence that my line was wrong and I might deliver the next bowl wider or narrower as the case required. What this practice evidence showed me was that such a change could be completely wrong. I may just have encountered a misfire. The right course is probably just to continue subsequent bowling with no change in aim line. It is only if you are hitting your aim line- and two consecutive bowls go errant in the same way- that it is proven that it is your aim line that needs to change.

I got these sometimes erratic results on a synthetic carpet using fairly narrow Taylor Vector VS bowls while bowling diagonally on the green from corner to corner. (I do this to practice the firmer delivery I need on the slower natural grass.)  I could actually see, in the case of some of these misfired bowls, that the bowl tried to get over a seam, failed,

’backed up’, and came at the seam again. Therefore, this observation might not be general but just particular to narrow bowls on a fast  synthetic surface with slightly raised seams. Because changing after one errant bowl has caused me problems before though, I don't think so.