A Proposed Improvement in the Rules for Bowls Sets Play

Contested to the End

Increasingly, lawn bowls at the professional indoor and even club levels has moved to sets play. Two sets of anywhere between 9 and 11 ends are played. If one team wins both or wins one and ties the other, that team wins the match. If each team wins one of the two sets, there is a 3 end tie-breaker. This is scored as best bowl wins the end. The side that wins two of these extra ends wins the match.

What seems to me to be unfair is that the choice of which side either has possession of the mat or the last bowl in the first and third ends is determined by a coin toss. I feel it would be an improvement if this advantage went to the side that had the best overall score when the two sets are considered together. For example, if side A wins the first set 11-2 and losses the second set to side B 10-11. The overall score is 21-13 in A’s favor and it should receive the choice in ends 1 and 3. If the overall score is also tied then a coin toss would be appropriate.

This modification of the rules would have another advantage. A team that is seriously behind in the first set would need to continue to play hard to narrow the gap they lose by to try to preserve an increased chance if the match ended up in a tie-break. As the rules now stand, a team losing the first set badly can give up the first set before it is actually over and just start preparing for the second set.

Short Bowls: The Number 1 Problem of Social Lawn Bowlers

The picture above shows a not-atypical head from a club triples game.  Because bowlers focus on the jack when assessing their proper weight more than 50% of shots don’t make it up to the jack. This is a waste because if the jack is touched by a bowl it essentially always moves back and away from whichever bowls have been left short. Another disadvantage of bowling short is that when such a bowl falls, it falls away from the jack. On the other hand, a bowl delivered behind the jack normally falls back towards the jack bringing it closer.

Skips can easily repair this deficiency simply by putting down their foot as the target one meter behind the jack. Imagine how different the above picture of a head would look if all the bowls were a meter further up the green. There would be many more bowls snuggling around the jack with a few good ‘catcher’ bowls behind it.

More about 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. In fact, when helping beginners, I often make a chalk mark at that distance 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 just by watching whether his or her bowl passes over the chalk mark.

Regular bowlers 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 my 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 hold my stare point the more likely my view of it will slip! As a consequence, I bowl better and faster.

If your club uses ground sheets all the time to protect the green from dumpers making divots (Etobicoke in Toronto)you can derive an additional advantage. The front edge of the ground sheet is about three meters in advance of the front edge of the mat. Often one can find a mark on this edge and move it onto your aim line by shifting your anchor foot position slightly on the mat. Thus, for example, by moving your setup position on the mat slightly your chosen aim point on the front bank and some distinctly visible mark on the front edge of the ground sheet can be lined up, so that all you need to do is roll your bowl over this distinct mark. This strategy is made easier by the change in the World Bowls Rules that now only requires a part of one foot to be on or over the mat at the moment  the bowl is released from your hand.
This strategy is particular useful at clubs (such as Etobicoke LBC) where a small V cut has been made in the center of each end of the ground sheet to assist in centering it. Using this V-cut in the ground sheet is particularly  useful when bowling in the evening under artificial lights where seeing clearly is more of a struggle.

War: A New Game Played with Lawn Bowls

War is a game I have devised that is played with lawn bowls on a lawn bowling rink. It develops skills that help in standard lawn bowls competitions but makes greater use of aggressive shots while deemphasizing the draw shot. When integrated into a practice routine, the game tactics emphasize drives, on-shots, blockers, and positional bowls. It is intended as a more boisterous game.

War was imagined as being played between two players each of whom delivers four bowls. Variants of the game can be imagined with teams and more bowls delivered per side. Unlike conventional bowls, however, an extra set of 4 bowls is involved in the game. These bowls are called the bodyguards. It speeds up the game if these four bowls are of a distinct color which is easily visible from the mat. In the picture, these bowls are solid yellow. At the beginning of each end the four ‘bodyguard bowls’ are grouped within a bowl length of the jack forming a tight rectangular box around the jack
 ( two slightly in front and two slightly behind it, as in the picture). The jack itself is centered at the hog line for the first two ends, then at a spot 3 meters behind the hog line for two ends, and finally 10 meters behind the hog line for two ends.

In alternate ends, a side either attacks the ‘king’(the jack) and his bodyguard bowls or defends them. The object is to end up with your side's bowls closer to the jack wherever it ends up. The scoring is as usual. In an end, the maximum score for the attacking side is four while for the defending side, the maximum is eight, since the bodyguard bowls count as defenders. The attacking side always throws the first bowl. If the jack is driven out of bounds, it is re-spotted centered 2 meters from the front ditch. Before the first bowl is rolled the defending side is lying 4 (the bodyguard bowls). Players alternate between playing attacker or defender.

The attacking side usually drives at or delivers a running shot through the head to break the jack away from the bodyguard bowls, although any strategy is permitted. The defending side usually tries to place blocking bowls in front, receiving bowls at the back, or covering bowls at the respot point. Again the strategy is up to the players.

When the head is seriously broken apart the game becomes a competition to draw closest to the new jack position.

Try it. You will get practice with many shots differing from just drawing to the jack.

The Problem of Bad Jack Delivery in Lawn Bowls

 

Alas, Good-bye Portugal 2018

Leads at lawn bowling clubs are usually the least experienced, most unskilled bowlers.

Singles players deliver their own jacks, but singles competitions are relatively rare except at the highest echelons of the sport.

As a consequence, you will rarely see any player practicing delivering jacks to precise distances. This is just the way the world is and I accept it. What I am ready to complain about is the increasingly common practice of skips that simply place the jack at a proper length when it is delivered too short or place it on the tee when it is delivered into the ditch. Yes- when a lead fumbles with the jack it is annoying and it slows down the game; but, to not return it for delivery by the opposing lead insults the contribution of leads in general and good leads in particular.

In the matches against touring English teams that  I have been playing in  these last few weeks at the Valverde Bowls Club (before returning to Canada), I have seen this three or four times. Only once was the jack returned, as required by the rules, to the opposing lead.

I will grant you that there may be some skips who are so frustrated by the inability of leads to deliver the jack the length called for, that they just give up on that part of the tactical game. On the other hand, I rarely hear a skip call out, “Good jack!” to his/her lead to encourage them. Dumbing down our game is not going to make it more popular.    

Taking the Mat when Playing on End Rinks at Lawn Bowls

Greenbowler has talked about the pros and cons between ‘taking the mat’ or letting the opponents ‘lead the way’. Whatever readers’ opinions on this may be, there is one situation where the decision is even more clear cut than usual. An example arose in a match I played this year.

 
We were playing on an end rink. Such rinks tend to have a chronic problem of wonkiness. Very often the hand closest to the side ditch is seriously un-level or the grass is patchy or trampled down. There is a serious risk that only the other hand will be playable. If you win the toss, you take the mat and try to get that first bowl in on the side away from this possible trouble. If you get shot, it is very easy to block up this playable side.

 In this particular instance, the opponents won the toss but gave the mat away. We got off to a good start. As lead, I never delivered a single bowl on the hand close to the side ditch. When bowls seemed to block my preferred hand, I changed my position on the mat to avoid those bowls but kept bowling the same hand. Many times our opponents tried to draw on the wonky side, almost uniformly with bad results.

Twenty five percent of lawn bowling rinks are end rinks. Be prepared for their special strategic requirements.

Head Reading at Lawn Bowls: The Enemy Cluster and the Need for Cover

Sometimes when you are ‘up’ in a head, the greatest tactical danger is a cluster of enemy bowls somewhere behind the jack.  The level of danger is usually proportional to the largest area contained within a polygon formed by joining the bowl positions by imaginary straight lines. For example, three bowls close together can be visualized being in a triangle; four enemy bowls close together can be visualized as being either in the quadrilateral or the largest triangle that can be made from the positions of any three of the bowls.

Even a grouping of two opposition bowls behind the jack can represent an incipient cluster because if the other side trails the jack back towards these bowls, the delivered bowl can often become part of the cluster.

The danger is that the jack may be moved to a location where all these opposing bowls will become counters.  The resolution of this danger is for your side to deliver a bowl into this polygon shaped area.  

Head Reading at Lawn Bowls: The Motif of the ‘Firm Wood Target’

 The motif called ‘firm wood target’ is a configuration of two bowls that sit about one bowl width apart, side by side, short of the jack. Preferably these two bowls sit centered in front of the jack. These two bowls can be any combination of your own and opposition bowls. The essential characteristic of this configuration is that the gap between these bowls is such that it is highly unlikely or impossible for you to deliver a bowl that passes between them without touching one or the other of them.

Such a configuration promises a wide target with several promising outcomes when a bowl is delivered at them with a few meters of weight.

If both bowls in the pair are opposition bowls your shot should be delivered with more weight. The objective is to remove both bowls and have your own bowl trickle on a bit to end up near the jack.

 When one of the pair is an opposing bowl and the other is your own, favorable outcomes arise when you achieve the same double takeout as described above as well as when you move your own bowl into the shot position. Because you also might promote the opposition bowl it is required that this opposing bowl be already a counter.

When both bowls in the pair are your own any hit on the pair with sufficient weight to move one or both will be favorable for you. It is the most preferred situation.

The slower the green the more likely a successful outcome becomes from this shot. The slower the green the firmer and straighter this shot needs to be delivered.