Another Reason for Lawn Bowling’s Decline

A couple of generations ago very few women worked outside the home. As homemakers they could arrange their affairs to free-up three or four hours during the working week to bowl. Men in contrast by and large were only available on the weekends. It was in this era that the customary practices at lawn bowling clubs were established. Women played during the week. The weekends were reserved for the men.  In many bowling clubs in Australia this practice seems to have continued. That is how things operated both at Burleigh Heads and North Turramurra, two of the clubs I played at during this past Canadian winter.

If I had discovered lawn bowls while my wife and I were still both working, I would never have taken up the sport because, first, my wife would not have been able to bowl during women’s hours that coincide with her work and, second, I would choose a weekend sport that we could both play at the same time. Fortunately, the situation is better in Canada than in Australia. Social bowling is more often than not mixed and there are many more mixed competitive events as well.
If bowlers who have played for 25 years or more want to preserve their beloved game they will have to give up playing arrangements from another era! I know you love those old boys’ club arrangements but don’t you love this great game even more?

Tactics: Wicking Off Jack High Bowls

There is a saying, very common in the days of all wide-bias bowls, that a jack-high shot bowl doesn’t stay shot on slow to medium greens. With the wide-spread use of narrow bowls, this has become true even on fast greens. The reason for the aphorism probably is that the wick into the jack off this wing bowl is very attractive because the other possibilities for deliveries from that side are also inviting: a better shot bowl or a trail of the jack away from the jack-high shoulder bowl. If the wick occurs it usually results in the delivered bowl becoming shot and the former jack high bowl being turned away.

Whether the jack-high bowl is yours or an opponent’s, bowling to achieve this wick is good tactics; however, whether one should change hands to try this is debatable. If the shot also requires that you both switch hands and bowl the wider side it may be, on balance, unwise. Whatever the case, the novice needs to follow the skip’s instruction. Do not select your bias and step onto the mat until you receive that call. The reason: wrong bias bowls are most frequently delivered when you misguess the skip’s shot selection. 

The Control of Weight at Lawn Bowls

For the novice lawn bowler, the first consideration in bowl delivery is the control of line or learning to take advantage of the particular bias of your lawn bowl. I suppose this is the first instinct because the arcing path of the lawn bowl is its most distinctive, and non-intuitive feature. As beginners we expect an approximately round object to roll approximately straight! When we find it does not but has a controllable arc and when our instructors offer an insight into how to master this, doing so is our first desire. However, more significant for how close to the jack the bowl ends up, is the influence of the initial speed or ‘weight’ with which the bowl is laid down.

Very few instructions enumerate all the variables that determine this initial velocity. Barry Pickup in his PDF file names them all although he does not provide them in a clean list and all he says about selecting some combination from them is “The fewer variables you allow into your delivery technique, the easier this muscle and memory training will be and the more accurate your bowls will be.” 

This article contains one sentence that is actually at odds with my own observations. Pickup says, “Since the position of your arm as you assume your stance on the mat has an effect on the amount  of back-swing you use and thus the degree of arc in your overall delivery swing, this is a good place to start your adjustments for varying weight and the distance your bowl travels.”  My own bowls teacher has a very gradual, very measured backswing that is quite unrelated to the position of her arm as she takes up her stance on the mat. I have adopted this. Where I start my pendulum motion is fixed and completely unrelated to how large or small my backswing is. Nevertheless, Pickup’s is the most complete presentation I have found and the most useful to me.

The elements that contribute to the distance a bowl will travel are:

 back swing elevation
degree of crouch
length of your stride
release of the bowl above the grass
rotation applied by fingers if any
arm bending at the elbow
added muscular acceleration from the arm
wrist bending at release if any


I have tried to list these in the approximate frequency with which I have observed them. Most deliveries are some combination of the eight elements.

When Delivering a Lawn Bowl the Score Should be Absent from your Mind

Sports commentators are always talking about the tension and nervousness that athlete’s must be feeling at critical times. The fact is: thoughts about winning or losing and the emotions associated with these are exactly what top athletes have been trained to banish from their mind. Outcome is supposed to become irrelevant; proper execution is everything. Once the routine of the learned behavior is begun, for many top athletes their subconscious takes over. The activity seems to proceed in slow motion (see http://ishi-in-sn.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/your-mind-heads-computer.html). To me, it seems the lawn bowler concentrates visually on the correct line, thinks of the correct weight and feels the proper arm motion. Everything else is pushed aside. It is even important to control breathing and heart rate because these, if different from normal, can adversely affect a normal delivery. Bowls announcers on the Australia network often comment that under pressure bowlers more often deliver too short. Thus deep breathing and muscle relaxation exercises can help.

Similarly sports commentators will talk about giving 110% or wanting to win more than the opponent. The top athlete does not buckle down more at certain times than others but aspires to peak performance throughout a contest. Wanting to win too much actually destroys performance; striving for your personal best, win-or-lose, by reproducing drilled performance results in more wins because it banishes worry and other distractions.

Updating the Control of Weight at Lawn Bowls

At the Turramurra LBC near Sydney Australia, when I sought help to control the weight of my deliveries, Bob Hawtree, one of the coaches, told me to really look closely at  the distance of the jack from the mat and silently in my head ask the question, “What does it feel like to bowl to a jack at this distance?" I was told this would elicit a response from my muscle memory. Then, “You should simply bowl with that memory in your mind.”

Essentially this means don’t first try estimating the number of meters from mat to jack and then putting a number on it. Rather, let your internal computer take the data from your eyes and let it control your muscles directly.

I was not spending enough time just looking carefully at the distance of the jack from the mat and letting that feed to my ‘mental computer’.

This advice must, of course, be combined with a fundamentally reproducible delivery motion. The coach emphasized three things for me in this area: the position where the bowl is released (about 6 inches in front of the advancing foot; the point in one’s swing where the step out begins (the bottom of my backswing); and the height to which one raises one’s arm in the follow through (not more than the height of the knee). 

Gratifyingly, this works amazingly well! I have dramatically upped my game. This is in fact the most significant improvement I have made in years!

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!!

Finding and Holding my Stare Point Depends Critically upon the Green’s Material Makeup

My best lawn bowling results occur when I can stare at a distinct physical mark on the rink surface about 5 meters in front of the mat on my aim line. Then when I deliver a bowl, I can see whether it passes over my mark or not. Consequently, I know whether a bad result occurs because I have missed my stare point or because I have a wrong stare point.
The easiest situation for feedback on this count arises playing on grass in Australia. There, because they have a chalked center line, I can find lots of longitudinal ad latitudinal lines from only partially erased chalk, in both of the directions, from other setups of the rinks where the greens keeper has worked to make the wear and tear on the rink even out.. It is easy to select a point on one of these lines or even an intersection of two of these lines that handily serves as a stare point. Not quite as good as this is the situation bowling on many Canadian grass rinks (they don’t use chalked center lines). On these the grass is often uneven, with brown spots , bare spots, brown spots, and partially discolored spots that can serve as stare points. On artificial surfaces it is harder to find a distinct mark for a stare point, but at least when the green is outside there are stray leaves, plant seeds, bits of sand and even some discolored spots to aim at. The most difficult surface of all is an artificial carpet that is indoors. There I find virtually nothing to fixate on. As a result, I am compelled to bowl at some mark  on or behind the forward ditch. With the winter weather now upon us in Canada, my only bowling opportunity is indoors on such a carpet.
Even though I am only practicing (waiting to leave for Australia next week) I know my  game is seriously deteriorating under the conditions. There is just no useful stare point and I don’t have that feel required to just deliver at a precise angle.