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.

Round Robin Play at Lawn Bowls

During the summer I was involved in the Mens’ Novice Pairs Ontario Provincial Championship. The first day of this tournament is a four-team round-robin in which the best two teams advance. There are only three possibilities for the outcomes among four teams in a round robin 3:2:1:0, 2:2:2:0, and 3:1:1:1. 

In such a playdown, two things are important:  first, winning at least two games if possible, and second, having high ‘points for’ in games among teams that end up tied with you. The regular strategy applies in the first two games. You play your best percentage shots trying to either win or keep the margin of loss slim.

But notice that in such a round-robin, thirty-three percent of the time you can advance even if you win only one game, so long as your ‘points for’ are enough! So, if, after you have played your first two games, you still have not had a win, your only chance is to win your final game while at the same time building up your ‘points for’.

 If you have been badly shut down in your earlier matches, you need lots of points in your final game; therefore, you must expose your side to extra danger whenever it will improve your chances of having big ends. If those extra risks cause you to lose a third game, you haven’t lost much. Most probably you were going home anyway. 

Using a Cocked Wrist in the Lawn Bowl Delivery

While I was watching Nev Rodda’s video teachings the shooters’ stance, I realized that my wrist position was different. The way I was holding the bowl in the claw grip, my curled fingers were close to being in a straight line with my forearm. Nev, on the other hand, held the bowl in what he described as a scoop, with the wrist cocked and then locked at that angle so that it was his thumb that was on the straight line which can be imagined extending down the center of the forearm. It was not that my hand/forearm connection was not locked during a delivery but my locked position was not the same as his.

The way I had been holding the bowl required it to roll off my fingertip(s) onto the green. With the Nev Rodda wrist position, removing the thumb pressure releases the bowl which simply drops a few centimeters onto the carpet, because, using the claw grip in the scoop position, the fingers are at the back of the bowl rather than under it.

Because the bowl is no longer rolling off the fingers, it is less critical where the fingers last contact the bowl, although at least the middle finger should still be centered on the running surface since it pushes at the back of the bowl.

In 2020 I changed my view and wrote a blog about the reason.    

How No Dead Ends Changes Bowls

At one of the lawn bowling clubs to which I belong, we have, since 2013, implemented the rule that there would be no dead ends. If the jack is knocked out of play it will be centered two meters from the front ditch and play will go on. As usual, if the bowl that knocked out the jack ends up in the ditch within the boundaries of the rink it will be a toucher.  The professionals use multiple re-spot positions in their sets play, but this adds additional work setting up the rink before play begins.

This rule change increases the probability that a drive will have a successful outcome because the drive bowl will very likely end up in the ditch or very near the repositioned jack. Bowling to short jacks becomes even more complex because there is now a new possibility to evaluate. Back bowls have a heightened importance and the bowl(s) closest to the re-spot position(s) can be most important of all.

If a very close bowl becomes shot against you, playing no dead ends the odds are improved for the tactic of simply starting to accumulate back bowls near the respot position(s) if your skip is skilled at driving. Hitting the jack, which formerly just blanked the end, can now win big for your team if you have several well-placed back bowls.

As a corollary, where re-spot is implemented, the block shot can be expected to become more important. This should be true particularly on slower greens where bowling angles are narrower. In these cases, once a bowl has been placed close up to the jack, the team that owns that fortunate bowl may be more induced to try to place block shots to dissuade the opposition from driving to get a re-spot. The alternative is to match back bowls early on once a good draw shot has been obtained.  Your back bowls perhaps should be near the re-spot position(s). This is called 'running for cover'.

This rule change will also impact another popular form of lawn bowls. Under re-spot rules, the drive will become part of the 4-3-2-1 game, because a re-spotted jack can completely change the count; for example taking a player from a shutout position to dominance in an end. Prepare for some long measures!

Another Singles Strategy

In the professional indoor lawn bowling match that you can watch on YouTube, the marker tells the players the length of the jack. In your club game it is your guesstimate.

This difference is the basis for a match strategy that you might find profitable. I used it this year in winning the James Gardens mens' singles club championship. Because the length of jack is not announced by the marker, the player who bowls the jack has an advantage not available in the professional contest. If you delivered it, you have a somewhat better idea of its length than your opponent because you have just felt the weight of that delivery. If you have practiced delivering a particular weight, you know rather precisely the correct velocity to provide to your first bowl.

Furthermore, by frequently moving the mat, you can continue to deliver that same length, yet disguise it so that your opponent cannot easily see that there is no change in length. For example, in my final match at James Gardens, I delivered short 23 meter jacks from mat positions at 2 meters, 6 meters and 10 meters out from the rear ditch. My opponent had to figure out the proper weight for each of these, but I knew from rolling the jack that every one of these was close to 23 meters away. Because I kept winning ends, I retained the jack and could keep applying the strategy.

Delivering the jack from an mat position except 2 meters from the back ditch is already unusual in Canada (probably because the center of the rink is not marked with a line), so placing the mat at 4 or 10 meters from the ditch is already surprising for an opponent. Players rarely practice such deliveries. Moreover, questioning whether a jack is 21 meters from the front edge of the mat is much more uncertain when the hog line cannot be used to judge it.  

Rotating Bowl and Wrist in the Backswing

Many expert Australian bowlers employ an inward wrist turn when taking back the bowl for a delivery. They then reverse this twisting during their forward swing so that the bowl comes out of the hand in the normal way. A coach has suggested that this is because these players started playing lawn bowls very young and they would have had difficulty holding onto the bowl on the backswing in those early years because their hands were small.

An Australian lawn bowling manual that recommends trying this modification does so with the codicil that first one should know exactly why you are making the change.  It can help to:

·         restrict the delivery arm from flaring out in the backswing

·         improve the completeness of the backswing

·         reduce the inclination to bowl across your body in the

   follow-through

Nevertheless, whatever its advantages, it adds an elaboration to the delivery. If simplicity enhances reproducibility using a straight back arm and wrist motion should win out in the end.

Bowlers who adopt the shooters’ stance gain nothing from this embellishment because their backswing is the freest of all and has no particular tendency towards narrow bowling.

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.