Safe Bowls in a Time of Pandemic

Bowling at a Happier Time

    As sports go, playing lawn bowls outside involves more social distancing and less inter-person contact than most others. On the other hand, bowlers themselves are more likely to be from the more-at-risk age groups.

 If you must bowl perhaps you could do the following:

 1.     Don’t congregate in the clubhouse; stay outdoors where the air is fresher.
2.     Do wash your hands vigorously with soap and water regularly for 20 seconds.
3.     Avoid touching your eyes, nose, or mouth.
4.     Don’t hug, kiss, or shake hands before or after a match.
5.      Don’t lick your fingers before gripping your bowl.
6.     Don’t pick up other people’s bowls.
7.     Only the leads should touch the jack with their hands.
8.     Only the leads should use the pushers.
9.     Preferably, don’t use the pushers; kick back the bowls like Australians do.
10.  Only the leads should touch the mats with their hands; others move the mats by foot.
11.  Don’t use scoreboards; have the skips keep scorecards.
12.  Center the jack with your foot, not your hand.
13.  Don’t lend your measure.

Stay safe!

Updating Controlling Weight at Lawn Bowls

About five years ago, 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 study closely the distance of the jack from the mat and in my head simply ask the question, “What does it feel like to bowl to a jack at this distance? I was told this will elicit a response from my muscle memory. Then, “I should simply bowl with that memory in my 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  reproducible delivery motion. Bob 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). 

Surprisingly to me, this worked amazingly well for a while! I dramatically upped my game. This was in fact the most significant improvement I had made in years!

 However, because I had not been playing long enough up to that time, my delivery had not been grooved and so the resulting inconsistency muddled the truth in what I had been told. Now years later, I only need add one thing to that wisdom: get your bowl away smoothly without dumping or wobble and the results will prove the intelligence of your subconscious knowledge of the correct weight.

 This extra nugget was reinforced by the words of a former Canadian champion playing with me at Valverde LBC here in Portugal just a couple of weeks ago.

Releasing the Lawn Bowl: Grips

Since the first day that I received instruction about lawn bowls I had been told that my middle finger should rest on the mid-point of the running surface because that long finger is the last part of my hand to contact my bowl as I released it onto the green. So…. if I didn’t want it to tip a bit on its side, that finger needed to be centered on the bowl’s running surface. Well-- if I imagine a bowl resting with my fingers under it, supporting it, and then rolling off of them horizontally, this seems pretty clear and indeed that is roughly how a bowl is delivered using the palm grip. 

However, the more popular lawn bowling grips are variations of the claw grip, where the thumb, placed on the top side of the bowl, clamps down on the bowl which rests on your fingers so that, even if you turn your hand over, the bowl remains securely held. In these grips, your hand is often bent back at the wrist so that it is your thumb that is parallel with your forearm and the bowl hangs down from your fingers with your thumb in front and your fingers behind the bowl. I show a picture of this above.

From this disposition, rather than rolling off your fingertips, the bowl's movement can be better described as falling a few millimeters from your ‘claw’ onto the green as you lower your whole body in the delivery motion.

Imagining what is actually going on based on this simplified ‘cartoon’, it is not nearly as clear that the last point of contact with the bowl is that middle finger.

But how does this matter? Well, when a bowl held as in my picture is released the part of the hand that retains contact with the bowl longest depends upon exactly how your hand lets go of that bowl. One way to release the bowl is to draw your fingers away from the bowl while holding your thumb steady. Another way is to raise your thumb tip off the bowl leaving your fingers fixed. A third way would be to draw both your fingers and thumb away from the bowl at the same time. In the first and third ways, because your fingers are moving, what remains in contact longest depends on how your fingers move. There is no certainty that your longest finger will linger until last on the bowl’s surface- it all depends on the coordination of those fingers.  Consider option two. If we just raise the tip of your thumb the claw will release. Your fingers don’t need to move at all. Your release surely will be more consistently uniform. If you grasp the bowl the same way each time the chance is excellent that it will be released the same. 

I don’t know if it will make an identifiable difference but I can’t imagine that it can be deleterious so that is what I am going to try to do.

If you are still in your first few years of lawn bowling, ignore all of this. You have bigger fish to fry. Grooving other aspects of the delivery motion will give guaranteed better returns for your effort but if you’ve got all that stuff down pat this is something to at least think about.

The Delivery at Lawn Bowls: Backswing Like a Pool Player

I have blogged about the importance of a slow methodical backswing as part of an accurate lawn bowling delivery. In another earlier blog I have compared this to an archer slowly drawing back the bow string. I think having a useful analogy for a physical action can highlight its most important elements.

Once more I would like to emphasize the importance of a backswing exactly along the extension of your aim line for the bowl’s delivery. Instead of archery I think an even better way to think about it is to compare it with billiards. The hand holding the cue must be precisely on the aim line that the billiard ball is to take. Also it is briefly stationary before the commencement of the forward push of the cue or the forward swing of the arm when a lawn bowl is grassed.

I find that mentally concentrating on a careful draw back of the bowl both improves one’s success hitting the aim line and takes one’s conscious mind off the question of weight and lets one’s subconscious take take care of that!

The Delivery at Lawn Bowls: Creating a Distinct Stare Point on your Aim Line

Apparently, most bowlers choose their aim line by looking for an aim point on or behind the forward bank. I also gauge the bias for my delivery using such a distant point, but then I go further and imagine a line from that point back to the centre of the mat and choose as my stare point a spot on that imaginary line about 5 metres in front of the mat line. I do this so that when I release my bowl I can clearly see whether I have managed to roll my bowl over that chosen stare point or whether I have been either wide or narrow of it. Based on where my bowl ends up I then know, when it is an unacceptable result, whether that poor result arose because I missed my stare point or alternatively because my stare point was itself just incorrect!

This post is directed to those who use a stare point that is close to the mat like I do. 

I have found that my consistency in rolling my bowl over a stare point about 5 metres in front of the mat line is improved if there is a real visible mark at that spot. A well-maintained green does not have many clearly visible marks on it; however, there are two ways that even a single mark on the rink can be used.

First, if there is a mark about 5 metres out but it does not fall on your aim line, moving your foot position on the mat can sometimes bring that spot onto your aim line and it can become your stare point. This is illustrated by (A) in the Figure.

The second method is more flexible. Suppose you can see a clearly visible mark on the green but it is too far forward to work as your stare point. When you get possession of the mat you can move the mat so that this visible stare point, your aim point on or beyond the front ditch, and the centre of the mat line fall on a straight line. This is illustrated by (B) in the Figure.

Using one of these tricks can make your stare point visible.

The Rule about Playing Out of Turn at Lawn Bowls

Valverde Algarve Portugal 2019 Winter

The most common irregularity during play that I have so far witnessed in my seven years of lawn bowling is playing out of turn which is dealt with in Section 29.1 of the Laws of the Sport of Bowls Crystal Mark Third Edition.

Since it appears to be the most common such irregularity it is worthwhile knowing the exact rule which comprises several alternative choices offered to the skip who has been offended against.

Rule 29.1 reads:

29.1 Playing out of Turn

29.1.1 If a player plays out of turn, the opposing skip can stop the bowl and return it to the player to play it in the proper order.

29.1.2 If the bowl has come to rest and has not disturbed the head, the opposing skip must choose whether to:

29.1.2.1 Leave the head as it is and have your team play two bowls one after the other to get back to the proper order of play; or

29.1.2.2 Return the bowl and get back to the previous order of play.

29.1.3 If the bowl has disturbed the head, the opposing skip must choose whether to:

29.1.3.1 leave the disturbed head as it is and have their team play two bowls one after the other to get back to the proper order of play.

29.1.3.2 replace the head in its former position, return the bowl, and go back to the proper order of play.

29.1.3.3 declare the end dead.

First of all, I do not advise you ever to stop an opposing player’s bowl (as described in 29.1.1), even when you think it has been played out of turn because if you are wrong and the bowl is not out of turn, the penalty to your side is severe. The rule that applies, in this case, is 37.1.1.3.

Bowl displacement by another player

37.1.1.3 If the bowl is displaced by an opponent and it has not disturbed the head after it is displaced (this is the situation where the opposing skip would stop a bowl before it reached the head thinking it was out of turn: my italicized interjection) the skip of the team that played the bowl must choose whether to:

37.1.1.3.1. have the bowl replayed

37.1.1.3.2. place the bowl where the skip believes it would have come to rest; or

37.1.1.3.3 leave the bowl where it came to rest.

The second of the opposing skip’s choices is the most potentially damaging in this situation because the opposing skip has it in his power to place that bowl which you stopped anywhere and you cannot object.

Note that if you, as skip, see your own teammate bowl out of turn, you must not stop the bowl yourself because even though that bowl has been played out of turn, you will have interfered with your own team’s bowl and can have that bowl declared dead because Rule 37.1.1.1 applies.

37.1.1.1 If the bowl is displaced by a member of the team that delivered the bowl and it has not disturbed the head after it is displaced (such as when you stop the bowl before it reaches the head; my italicized interjection), the opposing skip must declare the bowl dead.

This rule seems intuitively unfair. You are preventing a bowl that should never have been delivered in the first place from interfering with the match and yet you are penalized. I have wondered why this is so. I can imagine one scenario where without this rule misplaying could yield an advantage. There are probably some others. Suppose, for example, your side has bowled a legitimate bowl that has displaced the jack to the edge of the rink. You would like to know the weight and direction for your next shot which will have to be played over an unfamiliar part of the rink. Suppose you immediately, and unsportingly, took another bowl and delivered it along a possible line.  Because of this breach of rules, you get a good clue how to play your next shot and, so long as your skip stops your bowl before it disturbs the head, you would suffer no penalty if all that happened was that that bowl was returned to you and play continued in the proper order.

To summarize, if your side bowls out of turn, for sure don't stop the bowl yourself, call on your opposing skip to stop that bowl. He or she shouldn’t comply (it would be better to get the choice of penalty against you), but (s)he might.

What about that most common situation where a bowler plays out of turn? This happens when one lead delivers the jack out of bounds and the opposite lead delivers a good jack but then, by mistake, delivers the first bowl. As before, if it is your lead who plays out of turn, do not stop the bowl. Call on your opposing skip to stop it. If he or she does, it is returned without penalty and the correct order of play follows. If neither skip touches the bowl, the choices are as stated in 29.1.2.1 or 29.1.2.2.

Since in this most common instance it is the first bowl delivered, it can only disturb the head by touching and moving the jack. If the jack is moved 29.1.3.1, 29.1.3.2, or 29.1.3.3 apply. In this situation, 29.1.3.3 would never be chosen since it is equivalent to starting over. 

Note: this is not a ‘dead end’ in the sense that the end was ‘burnt’ (the jack has not been driven out of bounds), so the jack is not re-spotted at the forward T (centered 2 meters from the front ditch).  

The Delivery at Lawn Bowls: Controlling Weight

My Bowls are Yellow

Controlling weight is the most popular topic of inquiry on this blog; therefore I add the following.

There is a lot of confusing advice about how to control the distance a bowl travels after you release it from the mat. I discern that one big reason for this is that the answer needs to be different depending on how long the questioner has been bowling.

What I have found is that until you have bowled for about six seasons your subconscious does not have enough experience to know how to deliver the correct ‘weight’ on its own.  That is, it is not intuitive. You need to think about each delivery and adjust elements of your physical delivery consciously. You have to think about changing something: your bowl elevation, length of step, degree of crouching, whatever. When you read advice to make these specific adjustments, you need to understand that this advice is for newer bowlers who are just learning the game or bowlers who have made significant changes in their physical delivery.

Once you have been bowling for some time, (for me it was six years bowling year-round), these instructions do not apply. In fact, they are harmful. 

Your delivery should have become grooved by then. There is now another group of advice articles that apply. They will tell you something like the following:

 

You need to flood your subconscious mind with confident messages. Your body should relax. Let your conscious mind deliver reliable data to your subconscious (the wind, the green speed, the position you want the bowl to stop). Consciously set yourself properly on the mat; visualize the path for the bowl; then as you begin your delivery turn control over to your subconscious. Your conscious mind should go blank. You are ‘in the groove’. Your body spontaneously just does the required thing!

Until the delivery has become as natural as walking or driving a car, these latter instructions are madness. For newer bowlers, they just confuse and lengthen the learning process. For bowlers who have grooved their deliveries thinking about the physical mechanics, trying to control weight with the conscious mind blocks progress.

The Delivery at Lawn Bowls: Weight Consistency and Line Consistency All in One Magical Step

I have achieved a quantum leap in my lawn bowling performance that has not been matched by anything since I adopted the Shooters’ Stance several years ago.

Here it is. Clear and simple. Look at my diagram (I am left handed-so you will have to adjust for right-handed delivery).

From the Shooters’ Stance, I select a stare point about 5 meters in front of the mat line on my aim line. Nev Rodda in his second video explains that the Shooters’ Stance teaches that you should ‘aim’ with your forward stepping foot.  What I have found is that you don’t just generally point that foot along your aim line, you carefully point it precisely at your stare point and when you step you step out placing that advancing foot right on the line running to that stare point. Then, two good things happen. First, your bowl passes more consistently over that stare point, and second, more amazingly, because your advancing foot is completely aligned with the stare point your body smoothly rocks forward. Your weight transfers smoothly first to your heel, then the ball, and then the toes of that foot as you walk off the mat. The result is remarkably improved weight control!

Previously, I was stepping forward but my foot was sometimes not properly pointed. The result was that I couldn’t smoothly roll my body weight forward into the delivery so I got a varying contribution of body momentum for each shot. This meant I couldn’t control the initial velocity of my bowl.

There is more good news! Because line and length are so much improved my confidence is over the top and this allows me to think authentically positively about the outcome of every shot and when you believe you can do it, you just do it!