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Saturday, October 3, 2020

Tactical Shots at Lawn Bowls

 


Turramurra LBC



There are four distinguishable tactical shots in lawn bowls. The draw shot has as its target its final ending place.… that is, the shot is successful if your bowl finishes precisely where you are aiming it to go. Both the yard-on shot and the running shot,  in contrast, are successful if they don’t reach the spot the bowler is aiming for. Their purpose is to hit something in the head as they pass through it toward their target destination. The drive is distinguished in that if it fails to hit its target it will always finish in the ditch or out of bounds.


The Draw Shot

A Draw Shot is the most frequent shot and it is really what the game is all about. For this shot, the player attempts to play with the exact weight and line required to finish closest to the jack.  Less frequent tactics may require drawing close to some other location on the rink often to protect against the jack being subsequently displaced backward or to block the path opponents may use to get bowls into the head. Mastering this shot is considered to be the most essential in all bowls.


 The Yard On Shot

The "Yard On" shot is a bowl that is played with enough weight to carry it, if unobstructed, a yard or two past the target but the line that is supposed to be taken causes it to pass through the head near the jack. The objective of this shot is usually to drag the jack away from opposing bowls, hopefully towards your own, or to push a bowl out of the "head" and take its place. In Scotland, this is often referred to as a "chop and lie" shot. The shot is more often successful on heavier greens where bowls express less of their bias. With ‘swingy’ bowls on a fast surface, the yard-on shot that misses its target often ends up well out of the head and is most often no longer a factor in play. 


The Running Shot or Ditch Length Shot

The Running Shot is one that uses more weight than the yard-on. The object of this shot is to remove the opponents’ bowls from the head, to move the jack to the ditch, or to seek some other result that requires the bowl to be played with weight. The difference between it and the drive is that the running shot has a greater chance of avoiding the ditch itself even if it misses its target. This is important when your side has no back bowls or when the jack is required to be respotted if the jack is driven out of bounds. This can be a difficult shot to play as the line (bias) required for hitting the target changes with different weights. The weight should be constant with the line adjusted to allow your bowl to pass through the head. The ditch length shot is less useful on fast greens because a bowl that misses the head is likely to finish out-of-bounds because of the greater curling of a bowl on a fast surface.


The Drive

The drive shot is a bowl that is played with the highest weight that one can muster without sacrificing accuracy of line. Striking the target, usually the head, with full force is the desired result. The tactical objective of this shot may be to completely remove the opponent's bowls from the head or from the rink or to drive the jack into the ditch or out of play. It is most often used when a player has at least several shots against him and they are mostly closer to the jack than he is likely able to draw. In this case, the object is to destroy the head by driving the jack out of the rink. When successful this results either in getting the end replayed (traditionally) or causing the jack to be repotted (recently) which may be advantageous. This can be a very effective and intimidating shot to have in your armory but many players have difficulty controlling their direction when concentrating their efforts on so much weight. With the respotting rule more frequently practiced today, less velocity and more accuracy are more likely to produce an advantage. When delivering the drive it is very important to release the bowl no more than six inches in advance of the forward foot since holding your bowl longer is likely to cause narrow bowling.  


Monday, September 28, 2020

Avoid Dropping your Bowl: A Back Swing for Palm Bowlers

 






Bowlers who use a palm grip have a special problem; because they do not position their thumb on top of the bowl they cannot squeeze the bowl firmly and so cannot dependably hang on to the bowl if they want to deliver with any significant backswing.


This isn’t always a matter of choice. Many bowlers, whether because of the length of their fingers or because of medical deficiencies, cannot grip with their thumbs. Not having any significant backswing can make delivering a bowl to longer jacks, for them, either challenging or impossible.


I believe I have stumbled upon a way to overcome this problem. While studying the deliveries of the best indoor lawn bowlers for blog articles about them, I noticed that Stuart Anderson holds his bowl with its running surface at an angle to the delivery line throughout his backswing. He then straightens his wrist either at the top of his backswing or during his forward swing and releases it with the bowl’s running surface parallel with his aim line. This differs from what is taught to most beginning bowlers who are taught either a straight backswing or a drawing back combined with a Bryant twist.  Anderson uses a claw grip so why he does this very individualistic thing is unclear. What is very clear is that it does not subtract from his efficacy. Anderson won the World Indoor Bowls championship in 2019!


What I came to realize however was that if palm bowlers adopted this change they could have a secure backswing in their deliveries without any complicating coordination of swinging and twisting their wrists as is so often taught in Australia and New Zealand. The reason this works is that if you align your hand like Anderson does when you take your backswing, your thumb, if it is at the side of the bowl, will end up under the bowl and hold it more securely in your hand!


I, myself, use a claw grip but even without practice, I was able to switch to a palm grip and still retain the same pendulum swing which I had become part of my standard grooved delivery.


Monday, September 21, 2020

Z Groove Sonic 3.5 Aero Bowls


 


The author of this Greenbowler blog purchased a set of factory-new Z Groove Aero bowls which he has used successfully for the past 3-4 years. I only bowl with them in Canada. When I travel to Portugal in the winter months, I use borrowed bowls, usually any old standard bias Henselite set.


In Canada, I bowl on a variety of surfaces. The James Gardens LBC has a 10-year-old sand-packed woven carpet that has a draw very similar to fast Australian greens. At Willowdale LBC they have two heavy grass greens that I would estimate to run about 10 seconds (this year because of the reduced use they are spongy and are cut so long that it is difficult to reach the forward ditch and your aim point should be half-way between the rink marker and the rink boundary!) Willowdale has a synthetic third green consisting of an artificial plastic rink consisting of sewn together strips over a rubber underlayer that runs maybe 14 seconds, where the aim line would typically run to the midpoint between the boundary marker and the rink number of the adjoining rink.  These Aero Sonics work satisfactorily on all these surfaces.


My hand is big enough that thumb to thumb, index finger to index finger, I can circumscribe a #4 bowl but with ordinary bowls, without the Aero groove, I had settled on using a #3 in order to gain a firmer grasp when driving or playing under wet conditions. Using the Groove technology I was able to go back up to a #3.5 thereby recovering the advantages of a slightly larger bowl. 


On the heavier greens more characteristic in Canada, the wind does not significantly deflect bowls to significant consequence, at least for even a good club player. Playing on a hard synthetic surface like James Gardens wind gusts do deflect deliveries. I am told that dimple grips reduce the drag on bowls and I think that the Z grip with a groove combination could provide greater stability in a wind in the same way that the dimples all over a golf ball decrease its wind resistance. To prove this point one would need to find a location with much flatter greens than the ones regularly encounters here.


Aero bowls do not follow a path mimicking the Sydney bridge. Fortunately, this is only marketing hyperbole. Like all bowls, they exhibit (roughly) about a quarter of their bias in the first 3/5ths of their travel, 1/4 in the next 1/5th, and the residual half in the last 1/5th. I also own a set of Taylor Vector VS bowls. The Z Groove Aero bowls seem to be a shade wide and enter the head a shade flatter than my Vectors but unless you are a champion or have observed both sets for a long time it is hard to spot the difference.


I do not use any form of Grippo product unless it conditions are wet or it is actually raining. Neither do I wet my fingers before bowling. The Z Groove might not be easy to play in these situations but I have no experience one way or the other. I can only imagine that it could be more tedious getting a uniform application of anything onto a bowl when there are indentations (the Z) in another indentation (the groove).


My set are the Solar Flare color which is yellow background with red flecks as in the picture. Playing on artificial surfaces impregnated with Canada goose shit can discolor the running surface with a greenish-grey shadow that cannot be removed with just soap and water. The KLR product which is used to clean away rust and soap grime from toilets and showerheads does clean up this problem and restore the original colors. 

Wednesday, August 19, 2020

Why One Aims with the Advancing Foot Bowling from the Shooters’ Stance

 



It makes a lot of sense to place your anchor foot at 45 degrees to the aim line for a lawn bowling delivery. Placed at an angle rather than parallel to the aim line gives more stability when all your weight is on one foot as one steps forward. But why should one step out with one’s advancing foot toe pointing at your stare point on your aim line as also recommended by New Rodda?

 

Following the same argument wouldn’t it give an even more stable base to have that advancing foot also come down firmly at an angle to the aim line? 


I couldn’t understand the difference until recently when I was thinking about a different problem. How could I bowl smoothly if my stepping foot landed with a jolt as I set it firmly down in my delivery? The answer appears to be that I would need to come down on my forward stepping heel and rock forward transferring my weight from heel to sole and finally to my toes as I walked off the mat. But this is only possible if one points the advancing foot  somewhat parallel to the aim line. 


So that is the real reason why Nev Rodda  says to use the advancing foot to aim: the purpose is not really to enhance your aim (as he says, “This is how I like to explain it.”) but rather to smoothly transfer weight from the anchor foot to the advancing foot!

Widening the Head in Preparation for a Drive



A situation can arise in lawn bowls where your side is down several shots in the head but the head is very narrow and makes a poor target for a forcing shot. This can happen when the opposition has some combination of bowls immediately in front of the jack and immediately behind it. The target is thus not much more than one bowl wide.

Attacking in this situation needs to be a two-step strategy. First, your side needs to deliver a bowl roughly jack high with a gap of less than a bowl between it and the bowls in front of and behind the jack. This close bowl can provide the base for a wick in onto the jack or one of the opposition bowls. Because the target has been substantially widened before the heavy shot intended to attack the head, the likelihood of a successful attack will be substantially increased.

When playing triples it is particularly important for the vice to understand that in this situation the vice’s job is to widen the target. The skip’s job is to subsequently disrupt the head with a wick in off the preparatory bowl.

An example of what not to do arises in a match between David Gourley and Kevin Kurkow at the 31:40 minute point. David is two down; the target is just one bowl wide, but he has two bowls remaining. In the instance he drives first and misses the small target, then draws very close, but not enough to reduce the count, with his last. If he had done the reverse he would have had a much enlarged target for a last bowl drive.

When and How to Deliver a Yard-On Shot

 

Turramurra LBC
Turramurra LBC 2015?


An "up-shot", "yard-on" or ”on-shot” is a lawn bowl delivered with weight, greater than a draw shot, indeed enough to displace the jack or disturb other bowls in the head, without killing the end or losing the delivered bowl in the ditch or outside the rink boundaries. It is also referred to as "controlled weight” or as a “rambler".


The on-shot to a medium length jack is, for me, the most difficult shot in bowls. The target must be imagined. The exact length is more difficult to estimate compared with the very short or very long jacks and the correction in aim-angle compared to the normal draw angle is close to the error I have in actually bowling on the aim-angle.


The on-shot can only be dependable if you can correctly imagine the path your bowl would take on the rink if unobstructed. You also need to be able to estimate the velocity with which your bowl needs to hit the assemblage in the head and convert that velocity into an assessment of what distance that weight would carry your bowl if it was unobstructed. Combining this information with the imagined bowl’s unobstructed path that passes through the head provides a target location.


You then need to deliver your bowl with the correct line and length so that, if the path had been unobstructed, it would roll to the target location. To accomplish this, it is helpful if the person directing in the head indicates the target location with his(her) extended foot to provide a distinct target that can be seen from the mat.


An attempted on-shot should never be short. You only give oneself a chance to disrupt an unfavorable head by reaching it! A short bowl may make your next attacking bowl more difficult.


A yard-on shot should be considered when the opponent’s shot bowl is rather close to the jack or the opponent has a number of very close bowls or even if access to the head is simply blocked leaving you down in the count.

 The yard-on shot is characteristically used by skips and vices,
not leads (who should be drawing their bowls to build the head and in so doing making sure that all their bowls are behind the jack).

Monday, July 27, 2020

Another Minor Change in My Own Delivery after Scrutinizing the Pros








In recent blog articles, I have examined the delivery styles of some of the top-ranked indoor lawn bowlers using slow-speed and stop-action footage. This instructed me more clearly whose delivery I most resembled and from whose I most diverged. My overall body movement most resembled David Gourlay’s. My grip and hand position most resembled Stuart Anderson’s. 


The Small Change


This analysis motivated me to make one small change in my own delivery. Stuart Anderson, alone among all the bowlers whom I looked at closely, was the only one who instead of using a Bryant twist in his backswing, instead, tilted his bowl while in the ready position, took it back tilted, and only straightened his wrist during his forward swing before releasing his bowl.


I have found that if I use a Bryant twist as I draw the bowl back by changing the center of mass of the bowl it causes a 'jiggle' in the otherwise smooth draw-back. This is avoided with Anderson's technique.   

Thursday, July 2, 2020

The Mysterious Lawn Bowls Delivery of Andy Thomson MBE




Andy Thomson MBE is not among the top 14 bowlers as ranked in 2019-2020; nevertheless, he is among the top bowlers of all time and his delivery is the most distinctive of all. As such, it is worthy of analysis. Andy’s bowl delivery is not being presented as a model for imitators but as a mystery. 




What sets Thomson apart, first and foremost, is that after sighting along his aim line he does not hold his stare point. Prior to starting his delivery action, he is looking at his feet! 

Second, unlike other top bowlers he releases his bowl with a flick of his fingers to provide some spin to the bowl. Other bowlers either let the bowl roll off their fingers, or draw their fingers away from the bowl in a characteristic fashion. 

Finally, like the delivery of David Bryant, Andy Thomson rises up to delivery his bowl rather than bending down. He rises, lifting his bowl from a position touching the rink in order to make a short backswing before starting it forward. Unlike Bryant who initially squats to sight his delivery, Thomson is completely upright, bending forward with legs straight as if to touch his toes.


But let us analyze step by step.


Grip


Before gripping the bowl, Andy licks his baby finger. I do not know why he does this. The only hypothesis I can imagine is that it reminds him that he needs to keep his baby finger off the bowl. His grip is the three-finger claw grip with the three fingers under the bowl placed with the index finger in the groove, his middle finger on the running surface and his third finger in the groove opposite. His thumb is either in the grip groove or slightly towards the running surface.  I have difficulty identifying the exact position of Andy’s thumb. His three fingers are not parallel with the running surface of the bowl but their tips lie on an imaginary line at an angle of about 45 degrees to the line of the running surface.


Stance


Thomson stands with his feet parallel and side by side. He bends at the waist and not at all at the knees; in the pose of someone exercising by touching their toes. He slowly lowers the bowl until it just touches the ground. His non-bowling hand rests at the side of the bowl with fingers extended steadying the bowl.



Before taking this pose, he has looked carefully at the length and line but when his head is bowed in this pre-delivery pose, he cannot possibly see any stare point that is not within a few feet of his feet.


The Wobble-Stagger??

Delivery



Andy uses very little backswing. His free hand hangs loose and is not used to steadyhimself. Furthermore, his entire body seems to wobble as he sends forward his arm and releases his bowl.

I cannot understand why Andy Thomson would choose this delivery style unless he has a back problem that he is trying to avoid aggravating. There is a faint suggestion that this might be true. He regularly moves his non-bowling hand to his back at waist height as he rises after each delivery as if to ease a twinge of pain.