Lawn Bowls Tactics with Short Jacks

When you are losing a lawn bowls competition some change is required. That change may be resorting to short jack lengths.

Situation 1

If your side is trying to roll short jacks, the moment the jack stops rolling your skip should move the jack towards the center line with his foot.  If the center line is marked, centering can be done without the help of the lead which means that the lead can speedily be ready to bowl. If the opposition skip calls for a measure, of course, you should immediately agree. The club will have an appropriate tape measure available. However, if a different player from the opposing team calls for a measure from the mat you should hold up your lead briefly to give the opposition skip a chance to speak out. It is their skip who must question the length. A member of the other team may call out the distance the mat is up the rink. If nothing is said, signal your lead to proceed to bowl. Once the first bowl has been put down the jack length can no longer be questioned.

Situation 2

If you are playing under the condition of no dead ends with re-spotting at the 2 meter mark and you are both (i) ahead in the game and (ii) have the mat, you should bowl your lead’s preferred length with the mat placed so that the jack will end up about 2 meters from the front ditch. This way there is little chance to drive the jack out of bounds, but there is plenty of opportunity to drive opposing non-touchers into the ditch or out of bounds.

Situation 3

When your side is trying for short jacks, the best chance to get a playable jack at a short length is to move the mat up until it is two meters short of the hog line. Then you will have two meters in front of the T line and two meters behind it to receive your jack delivery while still being at least the minimum distance.

Situation 4

 If it is the last end and you have the mat but are behind in the score, deliver a short jack from a mat position such that the re-spot position is three meters behind the jack. This will give you the best chance for a big end. Trailing the jack, putting the jack in the ditch or driving the jack out of bounds for a re-spot all offer different results.

Besides tactical changes on the green, you can change the pace of the game. You can even cause a break in a game by requesting a measure to see whether a short jack is the required 23 meters from the front edge of the mat (21 meters in Canada). Your side may even have delivered this where you request a measure. This is legal. It can cause the other team to lose its concentration. They may subsequently choose longer jacks to avoid your requests. In a timed game it can shorten the number of ends played against a stronger team.

A Streak of Rubbish Bowls

When I took up lawn bowling I read that this game was at least 90% mental and only 10% or less physical skill. Mostly, I have continued to struggle with the supposed 10% but now that I have run into a run of ‘rubbish bowls’ I begin to understand the supreme importance of confidence to playing good bowls.

Since the beginning of January my wife and I have been playing bowls either at the Valverde LBC in Almancil or at the Balaia LBC which is located on the grounds of the Balaia Golf Village just east of Albufeira, both in the Algarve in Portugal.

The weather here has been great; however, my bowling has been aweful. That is:  I am full of awe at exactly how consistently bad it has been. But, this gives me the opportunity to write about how I handled a streak of poor performance.

 I did not handle it well! Instead of accepting that rough spots can arise from time to time and that one’s subconscious muscle memory will likely soon assert itself and the problem will disappear as mysteriously as it arose, I regularly panic and conclude that I am just not cut out for this sport and that  I have wasted more than a half-dozen years of my retirement trying to improve.

If possible the problem should be addressed during the game in which it first arises. You should have conducted in advance a self-analysis of your delivery that has identified a personal list of the most frequent deterioration in your ideal delivery. In my case I have found two that I have identified more than twice. By far the most frequent is not getting my forward stepping foot firmly planted before swinging my arm forward to launch my bowl. I have written about this problem repeatedly in my blogs. When this happens one cannot consistently pass near a stare point.

  The second  deviation that I have identified more than once is selecting a stare point more than 5 meters up the green with the result that my bowl has started to curl even before it passes this point and consequently I become confused about the proper line.

My difficulty during this last ‘rubbish bowls’ period was more complicated. At the same time as I was consistently missing rolling my bowl over my stare point I was all over the place with regard to weight. As it turned out I was suffering from two deviations from proper delivery at the same time and the interplay of these caused this random erring.  How did I diagnose what was going wrong? I reread my own blog articles describing my proper delivery. The line missing was as usual attributable to stepping out late-after I had already begun my arm swing. The error in length was not caused by my failure to mentally imagine the path of the bowl from hand to jack (this is the most frequent  cause) but  by me bending my elbow as I released the bowl giving it a slight spin as it came out of my hand. For me, my arm should remain straight as I release my bowl and remain pointing at a 45 degree angle towards the ground as I step forward off the mat. This is modelled after Alex Marshall MBE.

Nevertheless, even if you cannot identify what is causing a run of bad bowls so long as you have been bowling for several years your muscle memory will most likely correct any delivery defect in future matches so long as you don’t dwell on the problem and over-think it. This over-thinking is my cross to bear!

The Delivery at Lawn Bowls: Alex Marshall’s Bowling Grip

As mentioned in a previous blog, November and December are months for a lot of Youtube watching of bowls matches. The bowls season ended in mid October in Canada and my wife and I don’t head off for Portugal and the Valverde LBC until New Year’s eve.

Since I model my own bowling delivery after Alex Marshall MBE, I watch his matches particularly closely, employing slow motion and free frame techniques to see even the smaller elements of technique. I am noticing this year that besides exhibiting the shooters’ stance, he uses a non-standard bowls grip. I have tried to show this in the screen pictures above. This grip was being taught as an alternative grip in a teaching manual that I obtained while bowling in New South Wales, Australia about five years ago.

The advantage that I see with this grip is that it corresponds more completely to the natural angle that your relaxed hand would take up if you let your arm hang loosely at your side. I have tried to show this in my own photo below. The aim line is the edge of the carpet. I am left-handed and my arm is hanging relaxed at my side. My fingers are not parallel to the aim line. If a bowl is now simple inserted into my hand with the running surface parallel to the aim line I will be holding the bowl just like Alex is doing in the pictures above.

You can also see illustrated that I too am in the shooters' stance with my anchor (left) foot is at an angle to the aim line to provide greater stability when I step forward.

What the Complaints About Bowling Arms Tells Me

I have noted an editorial in Bowls Plus Magazine  

 positing that some special regulation should be applied to bowlers who use bowling arms because they create an unfair advantage. It is claimed that these 'armed' bowlers make errors of line only about 2% of the time while regular 'hand' bowlers make errors around 30-35% of the time. These numbers come from the letter’s author, Geoff Mathers of MCC-Kew Sports Club Inc., Victoria in Australia, who claims to have watched both types of bowlers extensively.

Two points arise in my mind that follow from this. First of all, this data must pertain to run-of-the-mill, club bowlers like so many of us! Good match-play bowlers do not miss their line so often. You can gather your own statistics watching on Youtube. Second, I think if this is correct it should be teaching us regular ‘hand’ bowlers something about how to improve ourselves.

What would give ‘arm’ bowlers such a big advantage? Think about it. I can think of two possibilities.

 First, the ‘arm’ bowler does not need to lower his/her body to release the bowl onto the green. Lowering your body by bending your knees while simultaneously swinging your arm can disturb your balance more than just swinging your arm the way the ‘arm’ bowler is required to do. This points to the importance for us unassisted bowlers of starting with our advancing foot somewhat forward so that our body lowering can be minimized by being already closer to the ground. Also, the ‘hand’ bowler can stabilize his/her body during the stepping forward by resting one hand on the forward stepping knee. This extra stabilization is not available to the ‘arm’ bowler. But many ‘hand’ bowlers do not use these elements in their deliveries. Having given up two advantages that would strengthen their balance, perhaps, it is these less-experienced bowlers who are complain the most about the supposed unfairness.

Another possibility is that the ‘arm’ bowlers get a clearer, more consistent view of the correct line because their  bowl is released from a more upright position so that the ‘armed’ bowler can easily keep his/her eyes fixed on an aim point on the forward ditch. The ‘hand’ bowler often finds it a great strain on the neck to stare at a point on the forward ditch while simultaneously bending down to grass his/her bowl. If this is the cause of the large discrepancy in holding the correct line, it may just need to be reemphasized that ‘hand’ bowlers should pick out their line while standing upright (like the ‘arm’ bowler) behind the mat, then select the appropriate stare point on that line, position themselves correctly on the mat, and deliver their bowl over that stare point. 

I do not think even we club bowlers will miss our line 30-35% of the time so long as we maintain the proper pre-shot routine. Perhaps the posited success of bowlers using a bowling arm can assist us all to be better.

Suggestions for Videographing Lawn Bowls

All November and December-It’s too cold to bowl outside in Canada. It’s too early to leave for a more hospitable climate; so, I watch a lot of lawn bowls online. 

General Atmosphere

Why is it required that spectators be quiet during play? Other sports do not ask for this. A basketball player throwing a free throw does not have silence or lack of motion from spectators. A baseball pitcher trying to throw strikes doesn’t. In the Australian Premier League there does not seem to be any such requirement for quiet. What do players think about this topic? If we want popularity, let’s lighten up!

Videography

Couldn’t the broadcast show some slow motion and freeze frame pictures of the different bowlers’ deliveries?

 Couldn’t a camera show some overhead shots from behind the bowler when he is delivering so we can see how wide a line is being taken? I have seen such shots but they do not continue long enough to provide all the information they could.

Sometimes a commentator seems ( from what is being said ) to be  marking on the screen where the best bowl should come in but I can’t see the marking on my screen. Why is that? Can’t it be fixed? 

In ice hockey, video is available from a camera mounted on a referee’s head. Couldn’t this be available for bowls by mounting a camera on the marker’s head (wearing a helmet!). It would also be useful when the marker is asked for an opinion about close bowls. The viewers could  see what the marker sees.

You have a ditch camera but it is only used when there is jack and/or bowl in the ditch. Couldn’t it be used for variety at other times?

Couldn’t overlapped pictures of a bowler’s deliveries be used to show how consistent these  deliveries are? The amazing skill of top bowlers is that they can do exactly the same thing over and over. We need videographer expertise to be able to make this point. 

Would it be possible to show close-ups of the grip of a bowler or his eyes during delivery? This would interest viewers and provide variety in the telecasting.

The sport has an inherent problem. There is an extended period of inaction between when a bowl is released at the mat and when it arrives in the head. Perhaps during this space, when the commentators are speaking, a camera could switch so we can see them. It would be more interesting than all the time watching a close-up of a running bowl.

The Participants

Viewers would be interested in the previous bowling history of the participants. This is already done to some extent but could be expanded. This would include what tournaments they had already won or participated in with a good outcome. Have these bowlers ever played against each other before? What was the outcome? What previous matches have they played in the present tournament? Where are they ranked in the world now? Have either of them been members of national teams? Do the participants play both indoors and outdoors?

What about injuries; have any of the competitors had injuries that have kept them out of competition for long periods? Have any participants had foot, leg or knee injuries? It would be comforting to compare their travails with our own.

Do these participants have good anecdotes about themselves? Talking about the players can nicely fill during the play. Viewers can watch and listen at the same time.

The Rink and the Rules

What is the maximum length of jack in this game? On typical outdoor rinks what is the maximum length? What is the speed on the surface being used in this match? How does this speed affect the shots chosen?

Can a bowling arm be used by participants in top level play? I know Kelvin Kerkow uses a cane.

 Strategy

What is the preferred length for each player? What lengths has each player preferred in prior matches? If involved in a tie breaker and given the mat, what positions and lengths does each player prefer?

What bowls does each player use in the match? Is either player under contract to use a particular make of bowls?

Tactics

Some top bowlers drive very hard, apparently to reduce the bias of their bowl; others have a more controlled delivery, apparently just trying to produce a consistent but small amount of curl. What is the best strategy given the rink conditions?

Why are on-shots so difficult on the carpet?

Do professional bowlers deliver their bowl differently when they need to deliver a.bowl close to one of the re-spot points?

Very rarely does one see bowlers at this level try to push one of their short bowls over to make it closer to the jack. Why is this?

Discussion of the use of the mat and possession of the mat. do statistics indicate that possessing the mat is an advantage or is possessing the mat just the consequence of being the better player and hence being forced to take the mat.

Why is it that we so seldom see professional bowlers bring the mat up to the hog line and bowl short lengths with the jack on the front T?

Style

What are the stare point for the different participants? What about particulars of stance? Why does the marker tell the participants the distance of the jack; ordinary bowlers need to estimate the length themselves?

Some bowlers use a Bryant twist in their backswing; what are the pros and cons of this?

Many professional bowlers walk off the mat in their delivery and are not behind the mat when their bowl stops. Isn’t this a violation of the rules?

Many bowlers bend the knee of their anchor foot behind their advancing leg during delivery. Why do they do this?

Some international bowlers seem to be looking down at their feet when they deliver the bowl (like Darren Burnett ). How are they controlling line? Along each side of the indoor rink there are pictures on the siding. Do bowlers use these images as aim points?

Andy Thomson has a strange set up in which he stands straight without any knee bending, then he bends over completely from the waist placing the bowl on his shoe tops and then proceeds to deliver. Comment on the advantage of this approach. Ask him how and why he developed this style? Other bowlers have other unique habits that viewers would be eager to learn more about.

 At least one former world champion, David Gourlay, often asks the marker to move apparently because he needs to see the boundary strip on the front ditch. Is he using the boundary marker for taking his grass? Many everyday bowlers take as a stare point some discolouration on a carpet or pock mark on a grass green but the indoor carpet appears perfectly blank. How does this change, taking and maintaining a draw line?

Top bowlers, like Greg Harlow, are noted to be moving around on the mat to make fine adjustments to their deliveries? Could the commentator point out when this is being done, explain more about it and propose a reason for doing it under the circumstances of play?

 The Play

What are the statistics concerning which hand each bowler is playing? How is each bowler’s performance going away from the commentary box versus coming towards it? Is either bowler leading off playing consistently around  the clock?

Sometimes the competitors use different grips. Could the commentators demonstrate these grips on camera?

Quite often commentators make some remark intended for viewers new to bowls; however, these usually pertain just to the rules. Couldn’t it sometimes be mentioned about the built in bias of the bowls and how that bias is quite independent of the velocity with which they are rolled (so long as the surface is completely flat and horizontal). Even long time social bowlers seem to think that if a bowl ends up short but on what seems like a perfect path to the jack, all that is needed is more weight on the same line! It is not intuitive that line and length are not correlated!

Commentators are often heard to maintain that differences in bowling are attributable to changes in the temperature inside the rink (during indoor bowling). Using a bowling ramp to deliver identical bowls, could you produce a video to show that this is true?  Is this difference, if any, significant compared to the natural variation in a top bowler’s delivery? Such a clip could be could be shown to break up monotony in a match.

The Delivery at Lawn Bowls: Add/Subtract Length

Only one of the leads in a bowls match gets to deliver the jack. Rolling the jack is the single biggest aid for getting the weight of your first bowl correct. Ideally, your first bowl should end up a bit further down the rink than the jack. You will then want to reduce your length for subsequent bowls.

Physical Aspects

Experienced lawn bowlers can leave it to their subconscious mind to correct a delivery that is the wrong weight; however, it is my personal experience that if you have played for less than six years, you will need to think about some specific physical change in your delivery to produce a planned as opposed to a random length change. The modification in delivery could be one or more (preferably one) of:

a. Shorten/Lengthen your stare point

 
With the differing ‘run’ of modern bowls, my method to establish line is to pick a point on the aim-line of the bowl to stare at. Only personal experimentation will teach you how far down the rink this stare point is best for you! My choice is a stare on my aim line about 5 meters out from the front mat line. Once I have established a standard stare point distance, it seems that lengthening this distance causes me to subconsciously add weight while bringing my stare point back closer to the mat subconsciously causes me to take off weight. 
When the light is poorer, I choose my initial, standard stare point a meter or two closer (less than five meters). The lengthening or shortening is not changed.  If groundsheets are in use, a point on the front edge of the groundsheet (3 meters) may be an alternative.

b. Lower your body height

The higher you stand the more ‘weight’ is put into the bowl when your body moves forward in the delivery. Since I bowl from a stance with my advancing foot already a half step out from the mat and with my free hand on my knee, lowering my body height is not a possible choice for me but it is reported to work well for others with more flexible stances.

c. Reduce your forward ‘step’

 
This is another way to reduce the amount of body momentum delivered to the bowl. A disadvantage is that changing your step length can make it harder to hold your aim-line.

d. Reduce the arm pendulum amplitude

By lowering the position where you hold the bowl initially, before starting your delivery, you reduce the pendulum swing amplitude. Try to maintain your usual swing tempo. If you are a palm bowler, your thumb will not be gripping the bowl so your backswing must be restricted (or the bowl will drop). Instead of a pendulum swing you need to push the bowl out, so will be forced to control the length with your stride as in (c) above.

Mental Aspects

If you have played for more than six full seasons, you probably don’t need to think about any particular delivery modifications such as I have described above; you just need to ‘see’ more clearly where the target destination is. I am not talking about improved 'eyeball' vision but a feeling for what the distance means for how such a delivery feels. You have bowled this length many, many times before. Your body knows how to do it. As the sporting goods manufacturer, Nike, says in its advertisements, “Just do it!”
 Set up consciously, imagining the path your bowl will follow from release to the head, then concentrate on a deliberate straight backswing then turn the forward push over to your subconscious. When the bowl is on its way be conscious of how close you were to passing over your stare point so you can make a correction, if necessary, on your next bowl. 
One of the mental suggestions is to ’focus’ on the jack as the last-but-one thing to do prior to looking down the line to your aiming point, and, have the jack’s position in your ’mind’s eye’ during delivery (never look at the jack). David Bryant says that before bowling he looks back and forth between his stare point and the jack and he only stares exclusively at his stare point as he begins his bowling action. This helps the ‘hand-eye‘ coordination. Something else that works for many people is to imagine the path of a bowl rolling down the rink and stopping against your target. This will impress upon your subconscious the weight that the path requires.

Lastly, remember that using the subconscious to control your delivery only works when you have had both experience playing on the surface and a history of consistent practice. You cannot, "Just do it!" unless you have already often done it.

Grip, stance and all other aspects of the pre-delivery routine need first to become automatic and entirely replicable.  

Lawn Bowls Strategy of Continuously Changing Jack Length

In lawn bowling, the most common strategy in singles play is to hang on to the mat and keep bowling the same winning length until your opponent recovers the mat. 

The presumed basis for this strategy is that your most advantageous length is the one that won the previous end. However, this may not be true. Particularly, if your weight is controlled by your rhythm speed, your advantage may be maximized by changing the jack length continuously, from end to end, since only you have the opportunity to set your rhythm speed by using the same delivery as you have just used delivering the jack. Your opponent, in contrast, will need to first estimate your jack  length and then base bowl velocity on that.

Remember: maintaining the same jack length when you win an end assumes that your advantage at that length will persist even after your opponent gets experience at that length. Your opponent may improve faster than you. If the length is always changing, you will have the advantage of delivering the jack to guide his weight. 

Taking the Mat or Giving It Away: A Lawn Bowling Summary

The Greenbowler has written more than one blog article about this strategic decision. I have swayed one way and then another. Now after several years of experience, I want to draw some cumulative conclusions.

Intra-Club Social Bowling

When bowling with teams randomly drawn for fun, give the mat away. The reasons are that

(i)                the opposition is very unlikely to move the mat

(ii)              moving the mat causes your lead, who is usually an inexperienced bowler, to get nervous

(iii)            moving the mat can cause real anger outbursts from the opposition

(iv)            many older bowlers think it is against the rules to move the mat for the first end (it isn’t)

(v)              your lead may be able to learn something from the track of the opening bowl

(vi)            there is an advantage to having the last bowl

Competitive Bowling

When bowling in competition with teammates, with whom you have practiced, take the mat. The reasons are that

(i)                your team has already decided and practiced this so it won’t create nervousness for your side

(ii)              if it is the opposition’s home green, they will be most familiar with bowling with the mat on the T so you will want to move it

(iii)            in the first end it is not recommended that the skip play heavy shots so the advantage of the last bowl is reduced

(iv)            your lead will have the chance to deliver both jack and bowl with the same ’rhythm speed’ thereby increasing the chance to be right on the jack

(v)              your lead can choose his/her natural length

(vi)            moving up the mat can seriously annoy some opponents causing loss of concentration

(vii)          once the mat is centered up the rink, your lead can place a chalk mark on the centerline at the center front edge of the mat so the same position can be quickly reproduced in later ends (where the centerline is not already marked)

(viii)        if your lead is differently handed from the opposing lead, he/she can bowl from the edge of the mat so that the opponent cannot follow this opening rack

Post Script

In a competition, if you want to play your second-best triples player as your lead, let the opposition play first. You do not have to reveal the order of your team members until after the opposing lead delivers that bowl!