Leading at Bowls: How I yearn to deliver the Jack

You know what I would like to do? I’d like to play lead for a good pairs, triples, or fours team. I thought, when I started lawn bowling, that I would be a lead for five or six years! I looked forward to it. But it hardly ever happened. In every club I’ve ever  played at in Canada, players are pushed up the tagboard, to second, then vice, then skip, based on relative skill, not competence; because you know the rules; because you know how to measure; because you know how to fill out a scorecard; because you’ve been around a long time. You must go up because new members are joining and we must make room for them at the bottom- as leads.

I will soon go to Portugal to play while winter occupies Canada. Out of politeness, I tell them there I can play in any position- whatever works for the drawmaster. “Would you be a skip?” they ask. Once I answer yes to that, I’m most often a skip and never again a lead.

Now Australia is different. At Turramurra (North Sydney) there are enough excellent players to provide ‘real’ skips for every rink, even at the lower pennant levels where the selector properly placed me. A ‘real’ skip is someone who cares where the mat is set and cares how long the jack is delivered. Still, there are enough poorer players, even in Australia, that I am a second for a fours team. Even here leading eludes me.

After five years lawn bowling I have never seen any other person practicing delivering jacks. It’s as if it didn’t matter.  

Christmas Bowl's Head Analyses

Head analysis does not consider either the skill level or the confidence of the person who is being asked to make the shot(s). Neither the score nor the ends to play is usually considered in these hypothetical situations. The bias of bowls and the speed of the green are left out. Consequently, there will always be disagreement over what should be played.

Readers should be inspired to share their own thinking in the Comments.

Four different head positions are analyzed assuming that the front ditch is, in turn, in the North (N), South (S), West (W) and East(E) of diagram A. The different orientations create four different tactical situations. The Skips are designated as White and Cross. Their bowls are respectively empty orange circles and purple circles with a cross on them. The small solid orange circle is the jack.

 A North

White alone has a single bowl to play and sits two with four thirds against.  A useful rule is: when you are up don’t be narrow. That is: don’t run through the head and change anything when are already winning the end. White can draw from either the left or the right. If White must score three he should draw from the right with the object to chop and lie on Cross’s bowl at three o’clock. Resting on White’s short counter at 6 o’clock or trailing the jack will also score three. There is a low probability downside of promoting Cross’s 3^rd at 3 o’clock.

If White can be happy with 2 while retaining some chance for 3 the draw on the left side is preferred.

A South

White has a single bowl to play and sits two with four thirds against.  The situation is not changed from AN. Here draw from the left if you must have three. Otherwise, draw from the right.

A West

In this head, Cross has a short bowl in front of the jack. Unless it is the final end and White must score three, refuse your last bowl and take a sure two.  If going for three draw from the left aiming to rest on your counter at 9 o’clock. Hitting Cross’s bowl at 10 o’clock may still give the score you need.

A East

In this head the bowls are strung out from side to side at approximate jack length. White has a single bowl to play and sits two with four thirds against.  Draw from the right. White’s bowl at 3 o’clock will partly shield the jack. Resting on this bowl or wicking off Cross’s bowl at 4 o’clock all score three. Drawing from the left has more risk to move the jack back to Cross’s backest bowl.

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.  

Bowls Tactics:When You are being Outplayed as Lead or in Singles

According to a tactical suggestion on one on-line lawn bowling site

 https://assets.sportstg.com/assets/console/document/documents/20160724053820Tactics_in_Lawn_Bowls.pdf

 “When being outplayed, try and change your opponent from the hand which is playing well for him. This can be done by changing to your opponent’s hand, dropping short, but only slightly in his draw.” This site, however, also suggests, “When down never be wide.”

 I assume that when you are being outplayed and see a need to act then  you are most often down in the end you are playing; therefore, applying the above second recommendation  you shouldn’t be wide. But if you hope to end up in your opponent’s draw and you have switched to the same hand as him, you must necessarily tend to be a bit wide (to get into that draw arc). Isn’t there a contradiction here?

It seems more logical to me that if you have been bowling on the opposite hand to an opponent who is ‘consistently outplaying you’ as this suggestion specifies, the advice should be to stay on the hand you have been bowling and start erring on the side of being narrower, so that, if you are short, your bowl has the possibility of ending up in your adversary’s draw.

Perhaps I am missing something here. Anyway, the above link provides lots of other good teachings.

Reminder before Delivering your Lawn Bowl: Visualize, Length, Line, Slow, Step, Smooth (VL2S3)

I wanted some mantra that would remind me just before each delivery of the most important elements of good performance. For me, it is six words.

Visualize
 Visualize the path of the bowl going from your hand to its intended target point. This helps fine-tune your rhythm speed.

Length  
Look carefully at the jack distance. Which is the closest of your natural lengths to this distance?

Line
Find and stare at your aim point on your aim line.

Slow 
This reminds me that the backswing is slow like drawing the bow in archery.

Step 
This reminds me that I need to firmly plant my advancing foot before the forward arm motion begins.

Smooth
 This reminds me that the motion needs to be smooth, not jerky, if it is going to be reproducible.

Why Do the Best Bowlers Break Off Their Deliveries more than I do?

If you watch the world’s best lawn bowlers on Youtube it is not  unusual to see one of them break-off his delivery and then restart his entire delivery routine. Usually the commentator proposes that some movement either in the crowd or by a photographer has broken the bowler’s concentration. My question is this: Why don’t ordinary bowlers do this to the same extent?

 I think we ought to but we haven’t been taught to- and we haven’t practiced to do so. I am certainly very familiar with the experience of letting a bowl go and realizing immediately that I had lost my concentration part way into the swing. The problem is that I have not trained myself to break it off. I just continue an already doomed delivery hoping beyond hope that some bump in the green or unplanned wick will correct my wayward bowl. 

Jack Delivery at Lawn Bowls: What I think I see David Corkill Doing

David Corkill is the BBC lawn bowls commentator and a good player himself. On Youtube I was watching him  delivering the jack in the 2016 Scottish Championship and I think I detected something that can benefit ordinary bowlers particularly those who play on grass.

David seemed to be rolling the jack intentionally off the center line.  I believe this action was intentional because he was not having difficulty with line in his regular bowl deliveries. Why was he doing this? There are two possibilities I can think of. (Actually I had already thought of both of these but had never seen anyone else intentionally delivering the jack away from the center.) First, delivering the jack towards the junction of the boundary and the front ditch makes it less likely that you will accidentally ditch the jack, since the path from the center of the mat to the eventual stopping point of the jack will be slightly longer. (It passes across as well as down the rink.) Second, by carefully watching the path of the jack as it moves in this path you can get a better insight for whatever slight sloping may exist. Although this may be very little on the carpet, a player can expect to discover some more significant variations on a grass rink. This jack path would work better for this because delivering the jack off-center more closely approximates the actual curved path of a bowl.

To see the behavior of Corkill view the middle ends of the first set in the following video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gZQ6k4L9UU&t=5085s

If You Accept that Length is More Important than Line, You Should Take the Mat in the First End

I

In the first end of most lawn bowling matches in Ontario, Canada, there there are no trial ends.  Everything about the rinkmay be unknown. as a consequence, your first bowl is  least likely to end up as a counter. Still, because many experts believe that length is 9 times more important than line, you should take the mat and bowl the jack because delivering the jack will give you an good idea of the best opening weight. A bowl rolled with the same velocity as and immediately following the jack almost certainly will end up behind the jack and even if you misjudge the line badly your bowl will be in place to catch a displaced jack. Moreover, because the proper line is not yet known by either side, narrow bowls are more likely in this opening end and it is narrow bowls that can knock the jack backwards.