The Control of Weight at Lawn Bowls

For the novice lawn bowler, the first consideration in bowl delivery is the control of line or learning to take advantage of the particular bias of your lawn bowl. I suppose this is the first instinct because the arcing path of the lawn bowl is its most distinctive, and non-intuitive feature. As beginners we expect an approximately round object to roll approximately straight! When we find it does not but has a controllable arc and when our instructors offer an insight into how to master this, doing so is our first desire. However, more significant for how close to the jack the bowl ends up, is the influence of the initial speed or ‘weight’ with which the bowl is laid down.

Very few instructions enumerate all the variables that determine this initial velocity. Barry Pickup in his PDF file names them all although he does not provide them in a clean list and all he says about selecting some combination from them is “The fewer variables you allow into your delivery technique, the easier this muscle and memory training will be and the more accurate your bowls will be.” 

This article contains one sentence that is actually at odds with my own observations. Pickup says, “Since the position of your arm as you assume your stance on the mat has an effect on the amount  of back-swing you use and thus the degree of arc in your overall delivery swing, this is a good place to start your adjustments for varying weight and the distance your bowl travels.”  My own bowls teacher has a very gradual, very measured backswing that is quite unrelated to the position of her arm as she takes up her stance on the mat. I have adopted this. Where I start my pendulum motion is fixed and completely unrelated to how large or small my backswing is. Nevertheless, Pickup’s is the most complete presentation I have found and the most useful to me.

The elements that contribute to the distance a bowl will travel are:

 back swing elevation
degree of crouch
length of your stride
release of the bowl above the grass
rotation applied by fingers if any
arm bending at the elbow
added muscular acceleration from the arm
wrist bending at release if any


I have tried to list these in the approximate frequency with which I have observed them. Most deliveries are some combination of the eight elements.

When Delivering a Lawn Bowl the Score Should be Absent from your Mind

Sports commentators are always talking about the tension and nervousness that athlete’s must be feeling at critical times. The fact is: thoughts about winning or losing and the emotions associated with these are exactly what top athletes have been trained to banish from their mind. Outcome is supposed to become irrelevant; proper execution is everything. Once the routine of the learned behavior is begun, for many top athletes their subconscious takes over. The activity seems to proceed in slow motion (see http://ishi-in-sn.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/your-mind-heads-computer.html). To me, it seems the lawn bowler concentrates visually on the correct line, thinks of the correct weight and feels the proper arm motion. Everything else is pushed aside. It is even important to control breathing and heart rate because these, if different from normal, can adversely affect a normal delivery. Bowls announcers on the Australia network often comment that under pressure bowlers more often deliver too short. Thus deep breathing and muscle relaxation exercises can help.

Similarly sports commentators will talk about giving 110% or wanting to win more than the opponent. The top athlete does not buckle down more at certain times than others but aspires to peak performance throughout a contest. Wanting to win too much actually destroys performance; striving for your personal best, win-or-lose, by reproducing drilled performance results in more wins because it banishes worry and other distractions.

Updating the Control of Weight at Lawn Bowls

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 really look closely at  the distance of the jack from the mat and silently in my head ask the question, “What does it feel like to bowl to a jack at this distance?" I was told this would elicit a response from my muscle memory. Then, “You should simply bowl with that memory in your 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 fundamentally reproducible delivery motion. The coach 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). 

Gratifyingly, this works amazingly well! I have dramatically upped my game. This is in fact the most significant improvement I have made in years!

Age is No Barrier Bowling in Burleigh Heads

On Saturday January 3^rd I bowled in Burleigh Heads, Australia, against a triples team whose lead was 97 years old. He was terrific. He used a bowling arm but he had no problem getting around for more than three hours on the green. I was playing second. Our best bowler was leading, but even so invariably by the time I came up to bowl, the head was seriously against us. I think we score three points in the entire match while several times they scored five in a single end. Their second told me, jokingly, I think, “We pay him to play with us.” It’s wonderful to see how lawn bowls can keep us elders active. Another fellow on this same day surprised me,  telling me. “Three days ago I was in hospital. I’m 92, you know, and I thought it was a heart attack but it was just vertigo so here I am.”

I chose lawn bowls because I wanted to participate until 90. I think I should choose a more challenging target!

Back at Turramurra LBC

I was playing fours Wednesday at Turramurra. I was having difficulty with the weight of my deliveries. Coach reminded me at tea time to keep my non-bowling hand on my knee. “It is flying all over the place.” I wasn’t aware of it. Repairing my form I played much more consistently in the second half.

The next day when I was practicing at the rollup another coach told me not to follow through with my hand as much. “It should not rise above your knee or more than an angle of 45 degrees from the horizontal.” Following this advice I was able to control my weight much better. I practiced bowling alternately to jacks at different lengths. After a few thousand more practice bowls this will become automatic also!!

Finding and Holding my Stare Point Depends Critically upon the Green’s Material Makeup

My best lawn bowling results occur when I can stare at a distinct physical mark on the rink surface about 5 meters in front of the mat on my aim line. Then when I deliver a bowl, I can see whether it passes over my mark or not. Consequently, I know whether a bad result occurs because I have missed my stare point or because I have a wrong stare point.
The easiest situation for feedback on this count arises playing on grass in Australia. There, because they have a chalked center line, I can find lots of longitudinal ad latitudinal lines from only partially erased chalk, in both of the directions, from other setups of the rinks where the greens keeper has worked to make the wear and tear on the rink even out.. It is easy to select a point on one of these lines or even an intersection of two of these lines that handily serves as a stare point. Not quite as good as this is the situation bowling on many Canadian grass rinks (they don’t use chalked center lines). On these the grass is often uneven, with brown spots , bare spots, brown spots, and partially discolored spots that can serve as stare points. On artificial surfaces it is harder to find a distinct mark for a stare point, but at least when the green is outside there are stray leaves, plant seeds, bits of sand and even some discolored spots to aim at. The most difficult surface of all is an artificial carpet that is indoors. There I find virtually nothing to fixate on. As a result, I am compelled to bowl at some mark  on or behind the forward ditch. With the winter weather now upon us in Canada, my only bowling opportunity is indoors on such a carpet.
Even though I am only practicing (waiting to leave for Australia next week) I know my  game is seriously deteriorating under the conditions. There is just no useful stare point and I don’t have that feel required to just deliver at a precise angle.  

A Lawn Bowl Strategy for the Lead at Pairs: Is there an Ideal Disposition of Bowls that can be laid down by a Lead Bowler?

Lawn bowls can be played as a game for singles, pairs, triples, or fours. Each has its subtle differences. I think the most different of all games is singles where only 8 bowls total are played. By comparison, pairs rolls 16, triples 18, and fours 16. In this blog article, I will be looking at pairs in particular, but there is some application to triples and fours, but I think very little to singles.

The question I want to explore is “Can we imagine a strategy for play by the lead in lawn bowling pairs, worked out in advance, that can give an advantage?”

At the start of the game, in the first end, one team gets to choose the position of the mat and the distance of the jack from the mat. The second team gets the advantage of playing the last bowl.

At all skill levels, bowling last is considered best and the  team that wins the choice chooses that their opponents ‘lead the way.'  Is this the best choice?

At Premier League level- yes, but among average competitive bowlers,  I suspect not. Too often the team that chooses the mat position and the length of the first jack just places the mat at the T and delivers a long or medium jack. A good pairs team should have a preferred length and mat position that is non-standard and which they can set up if they have the mat first in the match. This requires both that this strategy is understood by both team members and that the lead has practiced delivering jacks the predetermined distance.

Another point is that the lead who delivers the jack has the best opportunity to study how the jack’s path differs from a straight line along the aim line (because only the deliverer knows what the exact aim line was and how closely the throw followed it). The jack generally will run off-line towards the narrow hand. The lead can make use of this in delivering the first bowl.

An example of a strategy, (a strategy is a predetermined plan), if given the mat or selecting it, is to move it out twelve feet from the back ditch and deliver the jack a medium distance that you have already specifically practiced; delivering the jack as precisely as possible down the centerline watching to see to which side it curves. Then bowl the first bowl on this supposed narrow side trying to achieve a good back bowl about 6 feet behind the jack. This will allow one to get a better feel for the correct weight for the following three lead bowls with the lowest risk of actually wasting a bowl by throwing the first one short.  With the next two bowls aim for two yard-on bowls. If either of these goes a bit short it will be one of the shot bowls in the head. Only if the lead reaches his fourth bowl without getting one within a few feet of the jack should he shorten his weight aiming for the jack's actual length. By this time the earlier bowls will have given the best teaching for the correct weight. The result after the lead has completed his deliveries should be a first or second shot and three back bowls. The lead should deliver all his bowls in the expectation that at the completion of the end the jack will have been displaced backward towards the majority of his bowls.

A Lawn Bowl Blocks More than its Size

Often your skip will direct you to bowl away from the side of the rink where an opponent’s bowl blocks the approach to the jack (called ‘in the draw’); particularly, when that bowl is close enough that, if hit, it could be advanced close up to the jack. As leads or vices, we may be disinclined to change sides, because we might have already found the correct grass or even a good aiming mark there. Nevertheless, we need to be aware that an opponent’s bowl blocks more than just its own cross section. If even a small portion of your bowl hits that blocking bowl it will be thrown seriously off-line. The actual space excluded by that standing bowl is between 2 ½ to 3 times its diameter. Put another way the standing bowl blocks a cross section of 12 ½ inches perpendicular to the path of your bowl! It is also highly likely that, if you hit a bowl standing short of the jack, it will be moved closer to the jack. If your shot is too weak for that, your own bowl will be stopped dead and prevented from entering the head.

In contrast, if you deliver your bowl  as requested from the opposite hand, you have the added chance to wick off that standing bowl, if it is fairly close to the jack moving it away from the jack. Furthermore, your bowl may wick closer depending upon how you hit that opposition bowl. Being directed to the opposite hand allows you an unimpeded road to the jack with a chance to dislodge the opposing bowl or trail the jack away from it.