Visualizing the Path of Your Lawn Bowl

 A number of years ago I attended a Canadian bowling delivery clinic and I asked Steve McKerihan, a perennial member of the Canadian Commonwealth team, whether he visualized the delivery before executing it. He told me, “Yes- but I visualize the delivery in reverse.”

What he meant was that he started with a picture of his bowl at rest in the location that was his target (usually right up against the jack) and then saw in his mind’s eye the bowl slowly move away from the jack and with gradually increasing speed back through its arcing path to his delivery hand on the mat.

Frankly, I had forgotten about this remark for quite a few years but recently realized that this ‘running the video backward’ can improve my visualization, particularly the last portion going into the head.

It is not enough to just get an impression of the possible arcing path of the incipient delivery; this last part of the course where the bowl enters the immediate vicinity of the jack must be part of it.

Imagining your bowl rolling along this complete path (whether forward or backward ) is how you teach your subconscious that this is what you want to do next.

Visualizing the complete path is best done standing up straight behind the mat. Holding the line and holding one’s stare point on it is done in the ready position which, depending upon individuality, may be a crouch. I have found that squatting just behind the mat helps me precisely pick a stare point.

When I release my bowl from my hand I immediately sense whether it is going to be a good shot. Why this feeling comes is still a personal mystery.

Correct Weight More Important than Correct Line

During the first three years of my lawn bowling novitiate (2012-2014), I had been overwhelmingly concerned with line and had paid scant attention to length. The result: I rarely had a bowl that went out of bounds (an error of about 2 meters in line) but I often have errors of weight more than two meters!

Putting the problem this way makes it obvious that instead my first concern should have been correcting my weight and I should have left line to my developing intuitive sense. This should be the case particularly when playing on grass where bowling, aiming at the boundary mark, is never far wrong.

I was spending excessive time on the mat finding the stare point and insufficient time just assessing the distance to the jack and feeling the correct amount of backswing and forward muscular thrust.

My partner for novice pairs, Thomas Wu,  had invented a system of ‘notches’ in his backswing to control his weight and he encouraged me to try it. He said he could feel each of these positions in his backswing as a ’click’ so he knew when to arrest that backward swing and start his forward pendulum motion. 

Perhaps this sense comes with practice and perhaps not, but what is beyond dispute is that more attention to weight would pay dividends.

I tried paying primary attention to length in a friendly match at Willowdale LBC on a Monday evening back then. While doing this I simplified my game by setting my stare point on the forward bank rather than finding a closer spot on the rink. The combination resulted in the most satisfying result I had achieved for quite a while. My backswing clicks were at 6”, 9”, and 12” behind the heel of my anchor foot.

Although such mechanical guides are the only way to gauge distance when starting to bowl, after about six years one just imagines the required path of the bowl and then leave it to one’s subconscious mind to control the delivery.

How the Beginning Bowler Gets Started in Competitive Lawn Bowls

 

Tyro bowlers play their first games socially at the club level. You show up and a club Drawmaster randomly assigns you to a team. At the clubs I belong to in Toronto, Canada, this is usually teams of triples. As a new bowler, you will be asked to lead.

You deliver the jack, then three bowls, and rake up the bowls when the end is completed and the score has been agreed. There is no problem getting into a game. 

Whatever team gets you is stuck with you!

It’s a very different matter for tournaments where set teams are required. You need to become a member of a team and sign up as a team. How do you go about this?

Almost always you have to be asked. Almost always you need to be noticed playing in a club tournament before you will be asked to join a team playing in a tournament where players from all around a district participate., which is a step further. Who is the most likely person to invite you? It is a skip on whose team you get drawn in a social game. 

So how do you get noticed?

Wear your name pin when you play socially.

On some days, practice rolling a pail full of jacks to a fixed distance on a spare rink instead of entering the draw.

Learn how to avoid delivering the jack out through the side boundaries; putting a jack in the forward ditch is still not good but is more forgivable.

When playing socially ask your skip to place a shoe about a meter behind the jack as a target end location; explain you don’t want to be short!

Take advantage of any club coaching sessions.

In social games, follow your skip’s instructions.

Don’t try to take out the opposing lead’s close bowls; this is called niggling and skips hate it1

Strategy to Take Advantage of a Rink that Slopes toward the Ditches

A lawn bowling rink is ideally completely flat. The most common deficiency is to find that the surface slopes towards the ditches for about the two meters closest to these edges. This sloping can be so severe that you can see bowls accelerating as they roll down towards the ditches. You may also feel a more gentle sloping when standing close to these edges.

This sloping surface increases the randomness of every delivery that passes over these areas. The effect upon a bowl’s travel is most pronounced as the bowl is slowing. Bowls that finish further than the forward T will not usually stop but continue rolling and finish dead in the gutter. To minimize this, therefore, your side should shun really long jacks, if you think you have the more consistent team. But perhaps a better idea is to figure out how to put this condition to your advantage.

It is a good tactic to keep your jack deliveries 3-4 meters short of the front ditch and then deliver your bowls a shade narrower than usual because it is advantageous if your bowls just cross the center line as they reach the jack length. Only a bowl that gets back to center rink has any chance to become a toucher and move the jack backward. Being a toucher is of real value in this situation because both your bowl and the jack are more likely to end up eventually in the ditch. Moreover, it will be exceedingly difficult for the opponents to get a live bowl close to a jack that has been pushed closer than 2 meters to the ditch because any longish bowl that makes it so far forward is likely to roll downhill and die in the ditch. Big ends are more likely when your side moves the jack backward into this sloping area of the rink, so particularly if your side gets seriously behind in a match on such a rink, move the mat so you can get your jack just in front of such a slope.

When the jack is delivered just short of the sloping area of the rink, trying to place ‘catcher’ bowls behind the jack is no longer a good strategy. Such efforts are most likely to finish as dead bowls in the gutter. An alert skip, in this situation, will direct his team’s bowls to err on the side of being narrow to have a chance to touch the jack and if they do finish just short they will block the draw. Here, blocking can be more effective than usual because the opposition cannot simply follow the same line with a greater weight to finish closer to the jack because stopping a bowl behind the jack has become so unlikely. Usefully blocking the forehand or backhand draw is a much more promising tactic in this situation.

When one short bowl has been located in the draw of the opponents on one hand, it will be easier to find the line to draw another short bowl to block the other hand. Both shots should be delivered from the same side without changing hands. It is particularly advantageous to block both sides of the rink. Otherwise, the opposition may deliver all their remaining bowls on that free hand without further risk. If both hands are barricaded by your bowls and delivering behind the jack seriously risks rolling into the ditch, the opposition must chance knocking your short bowls closer to the jack when they deliver.

When a bowling green has its edges so distinctly sloping that a bowler finds it obvious, it is increasingly likely that other parts of that rink are also not level. This increases the likelihood that there will be two very different hands- one more forgiving and the other less forgiving. Also, the correct line to compensate for bowl bias will be different depending on the mat location and the jack length. If you believe your side can more rapidly adjust to such changes, then continually varying these will work to your side’s advantage.

When you place the mat at the T, you will be delivering your bowl from the sloping area of the rink. If you can feel this slope it is likely to affect your delivery. Your body weight will not be providing momentum to the bowls as effectively. Consequently, you are more likely to bowl short. To counteract this effect you will need to stay down longer in the delivery and perhaps make sure you step forward off the mat in your follow-through. On the other hand, if your jack is finishing well up the green, you may want to be a bit shorter as argued above.

Tactics/Gamesmanship Relating to Out of Order Play

Lawn Bowls Situation

In a pairs, triples, or fours game the most frequent irregularity is for a lead to deliver the first bowl of the end when his/her opposite should have done it. The Laws of the Sport of Bowls, Crystal Mark Fourth edition, states in this regard

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.

 
However, in serious competition, in the case where this is the first bowl of the end, this should never be done. Indeed, in this situation no member of a team should intervene to stop the opposition from bowling out of turn because the rules will penalize that delivery to your side’s advantage. 

What Happens?

Except for the less frequent occasion when that first bowl touches the jack(see Rule 29.1.3), the head will be undisturbed by this first bowl and Rule 29.1.2 will apply. 

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 their 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 proper order of play.

This rule gives the skip whose side has not improperly delivered, the choice to reject the delivery, if it is a good one, or accept the delivery, if it is a bad one. This is preferable to the skip stopping that delivery before finding out whether it is good or bad!

But there is an even better tactic. That is- Say nothing but rather get your own lead to deliver a second bowl and only after it has been played “discover” the mistake in the bowling order. In that instance, Rule 29.1.4 applies.

29.1.4 If a bowl has been played by each team or player in Singles before the players discover that one of them has played out of turn, play in that end must continue in that order.

By waiting until both leads deliver their first bowls before “discovering” that the order is wrong, your side gets to play behind your opponent for the entire end! In particular, your side gets to deliver the last bowl in the end.

When There is No Direct Path to the Jack during Play at Lawn Bowls

Particularly when playing triples socially, the skips may come to the mat and face a picket fence or thick wall of short bowls. There may be no draw to the jack. If your side has the shot bowl and there is no safe way to add to your count, you may just decide to add more blockers and leave the problem for your opposite number.

But suppose you are down in the head? In such a situation indirect tactics are required:

Bowl to a Nearby Close-Enough Spot 

Bowl to a spot that will give you shot even if it is as much as a mat length distant from the jack location. We get wedded to the idea that the only acceptable target is the jack itself. In fact, when only skip bowls are left to play, it is easier to guess just how close to the jack one really needs to get to obtain shot. A bowl a mat-length to the left or right or behind the jack might be quite sufficient and that path might be open.

Promote or Wick Off a Side Bowl

If your side has bowls right out in front of the jack, promotion is an easy call. When the bowl you must use for deflection is well to the side and 1-2 meters short of the jack, it takes more imagination to identify the available tactic to try. Make sure the target bowl belongs to your side; otherwise, you could only succeed in giving the opposition another point. If you miss-- wel you have placed another back bowl!

Try for an Otherwise Too Narrow Port between Two  Bowls

This play will give you two or three chances to succeed depending on whether one or both bowls belong to your side. You may raise one or the other bowl or miracle of miracles you may just squeeze through the opening. For this play, you will need to visit the head to be sure you are properly assigning ownership of the close bowls. Where there is a choice among ports choose the one where your bowl is the closer to the jack.

Scoring and Prizes in Lawn Bowling Tournaments

Relative Values and Number of Prizes

It seems the convenor of a lawn bowling tournament needs to ask some rather philosophical questions when deciding how to award prize money. The simplest approach is to decide how many prizes will be awarded and then divide the money into that number of graduated packages depending upon a predetermined scoring scheme. This works fine for open tournaments where the entrants are focussed on winning and not the socializing and encouragement for newer bowlers. For club events which seek more of these latter elements I think a different prize structure is needed.

  

Recently, I was the convenor for several club lawn bowling tournaments. There were only two games in these events which was not enough to produce a single undefeated tournament winner. It was my judgment that entrants had not signed up primarily to win prize money. They were looking for the pleasure of bowling in a competitive environment. I also decided that an objective would be to retain for every team the chance to win some prize for as long as possible during the play.

In a club game I encourage all bowlers to stay for the presentation of the prizes in the clubhouse, by having a draw from among all the participant teams who have not won a prize that day. To qualify for the prize, however, all the members of that team must still be on the premises. If the team is incomplete, another winner is drawn. The prize should be as great as the smallest merit prize.

Adjusting Scores to Account for Another Competitor’s Unrealistic Chance Taking

In order to win most tournaments a team must win all its games. A team that believes it has a realistic chance to top all the participants, if it finds itself behind in one of its matches with only two ends remaining, may take extraordinary risks to try to make up the deficit and get a win. Very often this chance-taking allows its opposition to accrue an undeservedly large number of extra points. This unusual number of extra points can give the team that is playing against the desperate one, sufficient points to win the tournament even where their skill does not merit it.

A way to avoid this situation is to record the points-for after the (n-2)th end while logging the winning team only after the full n ends are finished.

Let me give an example of this. Team A is playing Team B. Each match is 16 ends. Neither Team A nor Team B to this point in the tournament have any losses. But after 14 ends Team B is 15-12 ahead of Team A. Team A is nevertheless very confident that, if it can save this match, it can win the tournament and get the first prize money. Team A realizes that it must make up 3 points in 2 ends. Therefore, Team A plays some high-risk shots trying to score 2 points in the 11th end. In fact, it goes down 1, and starting the 12th end Team B leads 16-14. Now team A must be even more daring, trying to score 4 points to tie and force an extra end. Because they are forced to again try low-percentage, desperate measures they actually end up down 5. Team B has picked up 6 points in the last two ends and finishes winning 21-14. Team B ends up winning all its matches and its 21 points-for versus Team A enables it to break a tie for top spot and win the tournament.

If Team B’s game score was determined after 14 ends (15-12 ) and only its W counted after 16 ends, Team B might quite likely not have ranked first in the tournament. Team B won essentially because Team A took low-percentage chances in an effort to win its game and Team B benefitted. 

Breaking Ties in Awarding Prizes

For the in-club tournaments where I am convener, very frequently only two games are played and often the number of ends in each game is not really enough to overcome the inherent luck of the game. This is unavoidable; however, in awarding prizes, once the number of wins and total regular points-for have been applied, there is still frequently more than one team tied in rank. Plus points (any points won in a game > 1.5 X the number of ends); for example in a 12-end game plus points would be those more than 18 ) are often used to break these ties. I have found this to be a very unfair differentiator because the team that earns these points usually does so because it has drawn, by luck, a particularly weak opponent in the first game.

I have experimented with more imaginative ways to break ties in the final ranking of bowls teams.

Performance of 1st Opponent in the 2nd Round

If the team your side played in the first round, won its 2nd round match, while the team you are tied with, played an opponent in the first round that lost its 2nd round match; then your team perhaps should be ranked higher, since it seems more likely that your side played a superior first-round opponent.

This is a bit complicated so let’s look at a specific example. Two teams, A and B, are tied after playing two games. Each one has 2 wins and 16 points-for. Team A defeated Team C in the first round. Team C was paired against Team D (best vs best based on W/L and points-for) in the second round and secured a win. Team B defeated Team E in the first round but Team E lost its 2nd round match against Team F.  Using this method, Team A is ranked ahead of Team B in awarding prizes. It seems its first-round opponent C was stronger than E that lost its 2nd round match.

Now suppose instead Teams C and E both either won or both lost their second matches; what do you do now? You look at the points-for of Teams C and E in their second-round matches. If Team C has more, then Team A is ranked higher. If Team E has more points-for in its second-round match, then Team B is ranked higher.

This method of breaking ranking ties addresses the situation where your side gets a more difficult opponent in the first round. You still must win to get prize money but in the case of a ranking tie at the finish of all the games, the subsequent superior performance of your difficult first-round opponent will help your side.

Ends Lost by 3 or More

Lawn Bowls is a game where consistency is important. If two teams are tied in the final ranking, the more consistent team should be preferred. To measure this consistency the scores in all the ends of all the games for each of the two tied teams are examined. A count is made of the ends in which each team lost an end by 3 or more shots. The team that had the fewest of these ‘breakdown’ ends is judged the higher ranking.

For example, Teams A and B are tied according to games won and total points-for (plus points not included). Team A in its two games had only 1 end when their opponents scored >= 3. In contrast, Team B had 0 occasions when their opponents scored >=3. Team B would be considered the higher ranking of the two. Team B seems slightly more consistent.

The Lead’s Bowls: the Second Bowl of an End at Lawn Bowls

When the opposition have the mat, they deliver the jack and the first bowl of the end. This is not the time to be chatting, getting a drink or finding your own bowls. You should be standing behind your opposite lead watching the line taken and the result achieved. You should use this information to improve the outcome for your first bowl of the end.

Leads are required to follow the instructions of their Skips and these instructions are provided by hand and body signals they send once the previous bowler has completed a delivery. What is written here is only to acquaint you with some of the considerations a skip may be having when deciding what instructions to send.

Opposing Lead’s Bowl >2 meters from the Jack

An opposing bowl that finishes more than 2 metres from the jack should not be a consideration when deciding your own first delivery. Knowing the aim line that was taken by that bowl is very much a consideration. It can be a guide or a warning depending on how that bowl finished.

Opposing Lead’s Bowl is Close  but Behind the Jack

You might think that an opposing first bowl that finishes just to the side of the jack and around a bowl length behind it would make your life more difficult but in fact it presents an opportunity. If you can follow that bowl down the rink and come to rest touching that bowl (resting the bowl) you will be shot bowl. If by chance you strike that bowl with a bit more velocity you will roll it back and take its place! (chop and lie). In both cases the opposition bowl makes it more likely that you will have a happy result.

Opposing Lead’s Bowl is Behind the Jack but not Very Close

The Opposing Lead has just delivered a back bowl. Your skip will want your first bowl to finish closer to the jack and preferably behind the jack. Your skip is likely to let you choose the hand you prefer. If you have no strong personal preference choose the hand your opposite lead played, you will have a better estimate of the correct aim line.

Opposing Lead’s Bowl is Jack High but about a Mat length Wide of the Jack.

When a bowl is jack high the term means that the front edge of that bowl and the front edge of the jack are the same distance down the rink. Another term is they are jack level.

This is a favourable situation for your side. This bowl does not block your delivery path and is not so close to the jack as to be an eventual serious competition for shot bowl. Rather it confers a small advantage to your side. 

If you deliver your bowl on the same hand with enough weight to reach to or behind the jack but your bowl runs a little wide you can get a wick off this opposing bowl that will push your bowl in towards the jack and push the opposing bowl away.

Your skip is likely to call for you to bowl to the jack on the same hand where the opposing jack high bowl is sitting.

Jack or Bowl Situation

Suppose the opposing lead delivers a jack high bowl that is so close to the jack that another bowl would be impossible or almost impossible to squeeze between them without any contact. This is called the jack or bowl situation. Your skip might call for you to bowl to a specific spot on the other side of the rink from the close opposing bowl because that is where the jack is very likely to be by the completion of the end.

In Your Line but >1 metre in Front of the Mat

Unfortunately your skip will decide whether that bowl is in your draw line. I say unfortunate because often you will have a better idea of whether your delivery is blocked than the skip. For the sake of the overall team cohesion please follow the skip’s decision in this situation; even though your judgment may be the better one. When the skip asks you to change the hand it is for fear that your bowl will be stopped far in front of the head. The open hand will give you a clear path to the jack!

In Your Line but Quite Close in Front of the Jack

Ironically, when your opposite’s lead bowl is unambiguously in your line, your skip may not switch you to the other hand. The reason is that even if you hit that blocking bowl squarely your bowl will finish a very good second and if your bowl just glances off that opposing bowl and rolls on a tad further it my be you who has shot bowl!