I Can’t Even Accurately Estimate the Length of the Jack in Lawn Bowls

It takes a novice, like myself, several years to learn to control one’s body sufficiently to more often than not deliver a bowl with the proper grass, even on a perfectly level rink; however, in my opinion, this is child’s play compared to the difficulty of delivering with controlled weight. The fact is that standing on the mat I cannot even accurately estimate how many meters down the green the jack has been thrown. If my brain cannot determine that distance how can I instruct my muscles how much force to apply to my bowl? This inability to estimate the distance is more severe if I am playing on a middle rink. The closer I am to the edge of the green the easier it is to gauge the distance helped by looking at the closer side boundary. Often the edge of the green has its own calibration used when the bowling is proceeding cross-wise.

In this respect, the skip has an advantage over colleagues since when (s)he bowls (s)he knows from being at the head exactly where the jack sits. I would appreciate a skip who tells me (1) how many meters behind the hog line, or (2) in front of the front ditch, the jack is. On the occasions when I have asked, skips look at me quizzically or grudgingly. Sometimes they pace it off as if it was unnecessary information that I ought to acquire by myself. How can I be expected to deliver a bowl within a meter of the correct length without knowing that distance?

Perhaps this is a particular deficiency in me but what can I do to improve it or hasten the acquisition of this skill?


 

Again Remember--Plant that Forward Foot then Begin Your Swing

Whether just practicing or in a tournament the same problem recurs. I know what the correct line for delivering my bowl is, but I can’t seem to consistently hit it. It would be comforting if the solution were difficult and one had to investigate a long checklist to find the culprit. The truth is that 80% of the time it is the same thing. Why can’t I simply understand that it is the most import element of a precise delivery? Get that foot you step out with completely planted before you start the forward swing of the bowl. Then stare at your stare point and you will hit it!

I know I’ve written this before, but, if I can’t get myself to do it how can I expect another novice to keep it top of mind.

The Tested Advice of the Delivery Doctor

I tried the grip recommended by the Delivery Doctor in the video clip with the appended link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anEr9-wYtR0

It feels so much more comfortable! My wife, Tish, who is a first year novice bowler, also tried it. Our bowls hit their line more consistently and they ended up in a tighter group at the head! The advice seems to be easier to apply with narrow bowls with distinct grip circles on either side. Tish and I use Taylor Vector VS bowls but every manufacturer has narrow bowls. As the Doctor says you don’t want your thumb or little finger along the side of the bowl as 'training wheels'. You want the bowl to roll off your two middle fingers.

The conventional wisdom is that you want your index finger alone on the center of the running surface to be in contact with the bowl last. This does not seem to be best experimentally.

One Cannot Use Only Elevation to Power Your Bowl to Long Jacks on Healthy Well-Watered Grass

My home bowling club is James Gardens, Toronto, Canada. We have just 8 rinks with an outdoor synthetic sand-packed carpet. I bowl most frequently at this club because it is within a ten minute walk of my retirement condominium and I can see whether the green is playable from my 18^th floor balcony.

Playing mostly on this surface I developed my delivery during these last two seasons. For the shortest jacks, I simply push my bowl out with no backswing whatever. In this situation my bowling arm starts hanging exactly vertical. All the energy supplied to the bowl comes from an arm push out and from my body’s momentum as I step a medium step length forward. For the longest jacks, a backswing of 45 degrees from the vertical combined with the same medium step forward takes the bowl rather consistently to 2 meters from the front ditch. For intermediate lengths I adjust my backswing. This was all and good as far as it went.  

On Saturday July 27^th, I participated in the 2^nd Annual Tournament of Champions, which is sponsored by The Richard Bruton Wealth Management Group, and to which the winners from other feeder tournaments in different localities around Ontario are invited. My take home lesson, offered to me by one of many kind opponents, and reinforced by the loss of my three matches, was that depending upon elevation of the bowl, as I was doing, to provide most of the power needed to deliver, either short or long, on healthy natural grass does not consistently prvide sufficient control to compete at this more skilled level. One needs to have a very controlled backswing passing precisely back along one’s aim line and ending at a consistent height off the grass, followed by a variable muscle-derived acceleration of the bowl commensurate with the distance to the jack.

So back to the green to teach my muscles the appropriate lessons!

It’s the Backswing not the Follow Through that is More Important

The time, tunnel-vision, and introspection I have applied to my follow-through after releasing a bowl is substantial. I have attributed so many missed shots to this or that error in releasing the bowl. For example: my hand came up too high or not enough; my palm turned inward; my arm came across my body; my grip was imprecise; my little finger should be raised more or my baby index got in the way and caused a swerve. Well folks, my experience, little as it is, is that a different factor is more important than any of the usual combinations of the above mentioned putative failings. For me, it is the backswing that is overwhelmingly important. It should be slow, deliberate and critically- your delivery arm needs to be tight enough to your side as you draw it back to brush your body. Only if this happens will the bowl easily and naturally follow your aim line.
The corollary of this is to remove all bulky objects from the pants pocket on the delivery arm side. They will and should ( if you are doing it right) interfere with a proper delivery.  

The Physics of Lawn Bowling

One really doesn’t throw lawn bowls. The language we use to describe an activity is picked for convenience and broad understanding but it is not always as aptly descriptive as we might want it. We can give a wrong impression of what is required to a lesser or greater extent and this impression can perniciously stay with us. I think this is true from my experience taking up lawn bowling. The verb throwing implies that kinetic energy is supplied to the object being thrown by muscle action, the object is released from the hand and it travels away consuming that kinetic energy. A corollary of this perspective is that the point of maximum energy expenditure by the bowler must be the point of release of the bowl. I have found that this perception of lawn bowling delivery can’t make a good bowler because it is wrong.
 
Grassing a bowl is more akin to archery than it is to baseball or golf. Most of the energy that powers the lawn bowl down the rink towards the jack comes from the controlled descent to the green of the heavy bowl from whatever height you have raised it to in your backswing. In the same way, the energy that drives an arrow towards an archery target comes from the tension/energy that you store in the bow and bowstring when you carefully draw it back before the arrow is released. In both of these the energy is expended before the projectile’s release and then transferred to the projectile as it is released.

  

How Does the Skip Provide the Correct Grass for Teammates?

I was playing in a tournament an all novice triples tournament at Heritage Greens Kitchener Ontario on Sunday. One of my teammates turned out to be an excellent  junior bowler. After the first game, when I saw that he bowled better than the rest of the team, I asked him if he would skip the remaining two games because his bowls were consistently the closest of ours to the jack, but, because he was lead the opponents had many shots at displacing them. Owen and Grant made some remarkable shots but they could not overcome my extraordinarily substandard play, so we lost all our matches.

But that is beside my point here. This young  Owen fellow stood to whichever side I planned to bowl and indicated with his feet what my aim point should be. At first I, foolishly it turned out, used what I had calculated should be my line with my Vector VS bowls, but when that gave a bad outcome I tried taking the line running right to his feet. Owen was right over and over! The bowl went beautifully so long as I laid it down on this line (which wasn’t often that day). My question is: how does a skip do this? That is; choosing where to place his feet to signal the grass while looking only at the jack and then back towards me on the mat. He must be estimating the angle needed for my bowl just from seeing my previous bowl that, incredible to me, he only observed from directly behind the jack.

I ordinarily select my stare point by choosing a line based on an object or mark at the forward ditch. Owen and those like him have another method. What is it? How do you learn it?

Vices and Skips Seem to Worry Too Much about that Early Shot Bowl

Remember:  this blog is written by a novice lawn bowler who is just half way through his second year playing in tournaments so my impressions may be faulty and in need of correction and that correction is encouraged using the comments section.

I played in a mixed triples tournament at the Agincourt Lawn Bowling Club in Scarborough Ontario Canada last Sunday. The green was beautifully cut and rolled and it played very fast; as fast as the synthetic surface at my home James Garden club. If I had realized just how similar it played earlier in the day, we might not have lost that first match. But that is not what my main insight was that day.

It seemed to me that both we and our opponents spent too many of our bowls trying to hit and dislodge early shot bowls that weren’t impossible to beat with simple draw shots. Once a bowl was 8” or less from the jack everyone but the leads seemed to be trying to hit ‘jack or bowl’ with yard-on shots through the head or drives targeted to breaking up the head entirely. The result was a lot of near misses that went to the back of the rink or into the gutter. Meanwhile, the team that had the advantage of this closest early bowl was oftentimes making the situation much worse for the attackers. If it is the last two ends and you are behind, I can see that aggressive action is called for, but I am talking here about general play in the match.

My median draw bowl (the bowl that has equal numbers better and worse than it) when delivered on the James Gardens’ green is 52” from the jack. Even so that leaves quite a few that pass within or come to rest within 8”. Vices or skips will be substantially better than I am. Wouldn’t it be better strategy to just continue with everyone grassing their best draw bowls for a bit longer? Even if that early close bowl ends up being shot, it is only down one and those draw shots substantially improve the chances that the deficit will not be more than one.

Does this make sense or not?