Avoiding a Short Blocking Bowl while Obeying the Skip

It’s happened to all of us. Skip calls for a draw shot on a particular hand but there is a bowl sitting on what you recognize as your path to the jack. You comply. You hit the blocking bowl. Was there no help for it? Actually you can comply with your skip’s order without feeling powerless to avoid that collision. It is called ‘using the mat’.

I am called a ‘center line bowler’. That means whether on forehand or backhand I release my bowl along an aim line that passes through the front midpoint of the mat. If I anticipate a collision with a short bowl, I can move that release point six inches either to the left or the right but keep this new aim line parallel to the old one. My bowl should pass that blocker six inches to the left or right according to my adjustment. Geometry predicts the final resting position of my bowl will only be changed by six inches, much less than my normal bowling error.

 If there is a collision it is my misjudgment, but I am in charge of my own fate. At the same time I have complied with a directive and maintained team discipline.

Note that the technique of ‘using the mat’ is much more flexible since the foot fault rule was changed in the Crystal Mark Third Edition. Now, because only a portion of a foot needs to be on the mat or over the mat, there is much more room to maneuver.

Choosing Wide or Narrow Lawn Bowls

From four years’ personal experience, and after listening to others, this is my consensus judgment. Narrow bowls are a poor choice on slow, or uneven greens, or where windy conditions are common. Narrow bowls are a poor choice for novices because they are less forgiving of the wobble before we achieve a grooved delivery. For novice bowlers playing on fast greens, I feel the decision between wide and narrow bowls is more of a toss-up.

These conclusions seem to follow from the following.

Narrow bowls reduce the amount of bias error on the draw shots but narrow bowls require more careful weight control.
 Narrow bowls make it more difficult to draw around bowls (but they can go under them). Weighted shots can be played with less weight. The bowl that comes in narrow is more likely to stay behind the kitty.

Often narrow bowls play quite well in the morning but poorly in the afternoon because the wind usually increases in the afternoon and tilts narrow bowls. Also, by then many tracking marks have been left on the rink by bowls from the morning play. These marks are crossed at a more acute angle by narrow bowls and consequently are pulled offline more easily.

The raised seams of an artificial surface can interact with a narrow or wide bowl, more or less, depending upon the direction of the seam. If the seams are parallel to the rink boundaries wide bias is likely better, while if the seams run perpendicular to the rink boundaries, narrow bias bowls are likely better. When the seams run diagonally, each rink will display preferences dependent upon the location of the jack and mat with respect to the seams.

 It's the green’s condition and the tilt angle of the bowl that give different bias percentage to different deliveries of narrow bowls. Tilt angle, wobble, green quality, grass type, and especially wind have an effect on this bias-subtraction bowl type. If you lay down bowls with wobble, wide bias bowls are more forgiving.

 Narrow bowls allow for a flat, weighted shot to hit a target bowl square at lower velocity than with a wider bias bowl, but since novice leads are not often required to deliver run-through shots this advantage is minimal for them.

 A bowler can get a stronger bias bowl to hold a tighter line, but cannot make a straighter wood pull more.

 A swinging bowl is fine for smashing into heads because a wider bias bowl is straighter than a narrow bowl at higher speeds but hooks more at the end of its travel. The traditional bowl has the classic hockey stick shape to its delivery arc.

Names for Lawn Bowling Shots

Newcomers to the game of lawn bowls will have a better understanding of tactical considerations if they know the names for the different shots that can be attempted at bowls. Below is an alphabetic listing with synonyms where they exist.

Back Bowl: 

A bowl usually out of the count but closer to the front ditch; this bowl may contend for shot if the jack is moved backwards in the head. Back bowls have much more of a chance to get into the final count than short bowls.

Backest Bowl:

It is the back bowl closest to the ditch. 

Blocker: 

A bowl that may interfere with opposing efforts to get their bowls close to the jack by resting in the expected path for their delivery; therefore, a block shot is a short bowl. A bad blocker is a wasted bowl. Blockers usually have more psychological than actual value.

Chop-and-Lie also called Tap-and-Lie or Wrest:

A bowl delivered with about two feet overweight that it is hoped will hit another bowl, turn it away, and take its place.

Cover Bowl:

When a game is played under rules specifying no dead ends but rather respotting of the jack, a cover bowl is one intended to finish close to a/the respot position in anticipation of the jack being driven out of bounds. When such a bowl is delivered the bowler is said to be ‘going for cover’.

Draw:

A bowl delivered on a line and with a weight trying to end up closest to the jack; the draw shot is the most frequent shot in all of lawn bowling.

Drive also called a Runner:

This is a bowl delivered with sufficient force that the bias has minimal effect so that it runs fairly straight; it is a somewhat desperate shot delivered hoping to kill the end or radically change the head, when the other side is ahead by several shots in the end. If a runner does not hit its target it will end up in the ditch.

Firm Wood also called a Timing Shot:

An overweight shot played narrower than a draw but not velocity such that some bias is evident; the bowl is intended to stay on the rink even if it misses its target. The shot is a more gentle version of the drive.

Plant: 

A shot delivered in the special situation where two bowls are touching; any contact with the shorter bowl will send the second bowl away precisely along the line connecting the two bowl's centres.

Positional Bowl:

So-called because it is a draw shot intended to end, not near the jack, but at a particular location on the rink chosen for tactical reasons.

Rest:

A bowl that in its course usefully comes up to and rests against another thereby holding it in a specific place.

Runner (see Drive):

Running Shot (see Drive):

Run through Shot:

A variant of the ‘firm wood’ in which a bowl is delivered with several yards of weight to strike several bowls sitting in front of the jack; the bowl is intended to disperse the short bowls and continue moving to end near the jack.

Shot Bowl:

This is not a type of shot; the 'shot bowl' is that bowl sitting closest to the jack, as the head is disposed.

Tap-and-lie (see Chop-and-lie):

Timing Shot (see Firm Wood):

Trail:

A bowl that hits the jack so that both bowl and jack are moved backward, more or less together. When the jack is hit and the bowl goes in a dramatically different direction from the jack the bowl is said to have "sliced' the jack.

Wick:

A bowl that hits another in its travel and is deflected to a position it could not otherwise reach.

Wrest: (see Chop-and-lie or Tap-and-lie)

Yard-on:

This shot is directed against an opposition bowl calling for an overweight shot to displace it. The shot can also be used to promote a bowl of your own team that is short of the jack. The overweight is not necessarily a yard but whatever is needed to accomplish the objective.

Your Skip May Want to Accept a Jack that is Actually Too Short

When an opponent throws a jack that appears not to have travelled the requisite distance from the front mat line (21 meters in Australia and Canada), your skip might not raise an objection. Similarly, you as lead may deliver a jack that is actually too short and the opponents may say nothing. A short jack may be what your skip wants.  When the opposing skip raises no objection that jack, after being centered, will be played to. Neither you as a lead nor any other team member, should say anything. If asked by your skip how far the mat is from the rear ditch, you should give a good estimate but make no comment about jack length. According to the World Laws of Bowls, Third Edition, once the first bowl has been rolled the jack length cannot be disputed.

As part of good team communication it would be good to quietly draw a teammate’s attention to the shortness of the jack before he or she rolls your side’s first bowl. In a singles match, it is the marker who is responsible for making sure the jack length is at least the minimum length.

Ignorance of this Law of Bowls can cost you the Match

Often in in-club tournaments a match outcome hinges upon control of the mat; one team does better on short ends, the other on long ones. Yet, in such in-club games, the leads may both be very new bowlers. The lead with the mat may, for example, deliver the jack too short or too wide and the other lead may then put the jack out or in the forward ditch. In this situation, the rule is that the jack is centered two meters from the forward ditch and the origin lead delivers the first bowl. What is often not remembered is that in this situation, the original lead bowler may move the mat forward to wherever his/her skip wants it to be placed before that first bowl is rolled. This is crucial because the original lead’s team may be the one needing a short jack and, if they don’t know the rule, that team will be faced with a very long one!

To quote chapter and verse, in Laws of the Sport of Bowls, Crystal Mark, Third Edition, rule 10.3 states, “If the jack is delivered improperly once by each player in any end, it must not be delivered again in that end. Instead, it must be centered with the nearest point of the jack to the mat line being two meters from the front ditch, and the mat must be placed as described in 6.1.1 by the first player to play”.
 Rule 6.1.1 in turn states, “Before the start of play in each end, the player to play first must place the center line of the mat lengthwise along the center line of the rink, with the mat line at least two meters from the rear ditch and at least 25 [23 in Canada] meters from the front ditch”.
In other words, the team that will play first regains control of the jack length because they can adjust the position of the mat before bowling the first bowl!

 

Lawn Bowling from the Shooters Stance

I am very reluctant to suggest even to novice bowlers that they change their delivery after committing one delivery to 'muscle memory' but I am going to do it. I have watched the two teaching videos below and I have tried what they recommend. I have identified what is being recommended with what I am seeing world class bowlers like Alex Marshall MBE and Paul Foster MBE execute on youtube. I have tried the method out. Already I can see a difference in favor of the shooter’s stance! I can feel the improved stability in my body at that critical moment when I step forward with my advancing foot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b9cKvPeWj4&spfreload=10

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkKgJWDq1GA

There is perhaps an additional huge advantage that may be related to this change. I am left handed. I was suffering from plantar faciitis in my left foot, which is my anchor foot. I suspected that this condition was being caused or at least agravated in my case by the stress created by the unbalance that was occurring at the moment that all my weight moved onto this foot when I was pushing my weight forward into my bowling swing. This hunch seems to be supported by the unusual wear pattern on the sole of my bowling shoes. My left, the anchor shoe had a worn spot, not at the edge where it is commonly found, but right at the center of the heel! The shooter’s stance, by giving me a more stable base, seems to have relieved the condition. To be fair I placed orthodic insoles into my bowling shoes about the same time, so this wasn’t exactly one variable at a time experimentation. 

Whatever works, right!  

Using the ‘Bryant Twist’ to Deliver the Jack on a Slow Grass Lawn Bowl’s Rink

I recently finished two weeks practically living at the James Gardens Lawn Bowling Club. I kept almost regular business hours so that new bowlers would know that the club was open for their free trial, practice, and/or instruction. I took two days off during that spell so I could play in a couple of open pairs tournaments; otherwise-at the club-at the club!

During this volunteer spell, there was plenty of free time for personal practice. I discovered that if I turned my wrist in to my body on the backswing my line corrected so that I could aim directly at a mark on the front ditch rather than having to trace a line back and pick a stare point about five meters out from the mat on the green. However, after trying this in a few matches I have returned to my previous delivery completely.

Where I did find this turning the wrist inward helpful was in casting the jack. On the slow Canadian grass, I was finding it difficult to roll the jack a full length green, from T to T. To achieve this I needed a very high backswing, where the bowling arm was coming well above the horizontal position. This was only comfortable when I turned my wrist 90 degrees in to my side as it passed my  leg and then another 90 degrees as my hand reached its highest point. For comparison, on a representative Eastern Canadian green,  to deliver the jack to the hog line (21meters) I needed only a 45 degree backswing. But whatever the length, the delivery was straighter and more fluid when my wrist is twists during the swing.

When done to deliver a bowl this is called the Bryant twist. It was also part of Tony Allcock’s delivery. 

What is Your Natural Length of Jack?

Rather often the skip at lawn bowls will tell the lead bowler to send the jack to the lead’s ‘natural length’. Well, what is your ‘natural length’? How is the term defined? Your ‘natural length’ is the length to which you can most dependably, smoothly and effortlessly send a bowl. On the  outdoor synthetic green at James Gardens in Toronto, Canada, for example, my preferred length happens to be the longest jack possible: two meters from the forward ditch when the mat is set two meters from the rear ditch. By good fortune, my natural pendulum swing delivers my bowls that distance.

When on another green, however, I can only discover my natural jack length by grassing a bowl with the same step and swing that I would use at James Gardens and then measuring how far the bowl goes down this new rink. This becomes my  natural length on that rink under those weather conditions.  Sadly, on the slow grass rinks in Ontario, Canada this can be just past the hog line! Whatever it may be, your natural length needs to be determined at the place you are going to play before the start of any competition there. Even if there are no practice ends (as in Ontario Canada), this can be done by rolling a few bowls at right angles to the direction in which the tournament games are going to be played, when warming up before play begins. Grass your natural weight and measure the distance it travels from the front of the mat. Then see how much weight is needed to deliver a jack to that length. Now you are better prepared to compete. Let your skip know your preferred length.