Overcoming Rubbish Bowling

As I have been reporting, this winter’s bowling in Portugal’s Algarve region has been problematic to say the least. Today my wife and I had our last roll up at the Valverde LBC. We fly home on April 1^st. 

The friendliness is terrific but what I have missed is the opportunity to get out on a rink alone and just practice deliveries one after another with a couple of sets of identical bowls. 

Today I played lead in a pairs game and just concentrated on delivering the jack with a consistent 45 degrees of backswing and smooth rhythm speed as I brought my body forward and particularly emphasized making sure that I walked off the front of the mat following the bowl a few steps as I released my bowl. This allowed me to swing through with a more relaxed arm. The extra elevation in the backswing provided extra velocity so that I didn’t have to give any final thrust at release. I could consequently hold the bowl more gently.

I left Valverde for another year with a more confident feeling.   

An Unlawful Delivery at Lawn Bowls

At one of the places where I am visiting in Portugal, one of the bowlers uses, very effectively, a delivery technique which I had never seen before, at any level of lawn bowling, from the club level to the world championships; neither indoor nor outdoor. He starts standing, feet together, one stride behind the mat. Then, in one motion, he steps forward onto the mat, sets his foot on the mat and as he takes a second step forward with the normal advancing foot he releases his bowl. As he releases his bowl one of his feet is either fully or partially on or over the mat.

I was curious why I had never seen this done before. On further investigating I found the reason. Every such delivery is a foot fault! The pertinent law of the sport of bowls reads:

7.1          Before delivery a player must be standing on the mat with all or at least part of one foot on the mat.[my bold italics] At the moment they deliver the jack or a bowl, the player must have all or at least part of one foot on or above the mat.

Now what should I do? This gentleman has been bowling this way for years. I presume no one has ever called him for a foot fault all this time. He has probably never played in an officiated tournament. Should I speak to him about it off the green?

What would you do?  

When You & Your Opponent are Each Bowling Well from Opposing Hands

When you & your opponent are each bowling well but from opposing hands, the advantage is likely to pass from the side that is forced to switch hands because that side will have to judge afresh both the correct grass and weight. You can force your opponent to change hands by delivering a short bowl that crosses the center line and comes to rest in the opponent’s draw. Your opponent will probably get worried about hitting this bowl and promoting it onto the jack and for this reason, may be induced to change hand. This strategy can be seen being practiced in the match between Harlow and Chok  

So in this situation shade, your draw shot towards being narrow. If it is short it can block your opponent’s line. If it is perfectly weighted it can possibly trail the jack and if it is behind it becomes a good ‘catcher’ for your subsequent deliveries.

P.S. In the above-linked video Harlow also demonstrates a different tactic. When the draw on both sides is blocked he bowls with more weight for the bare jack and takes it and his bowl into the ditch. This occurs at time 1:16:23 on the video.

A Lawn Bowls Strategy for Playing Singles against a Perennial Skip

Suppose you most often play lead or vice in triples matches but now you are matched to play singles against a player who typically skips.  What possible advantage could you have? This was the question I asked myself recently here in Portugal when I was drawn against one of the top players in our men’s club singles tournament.

Leads and vices have more practice estimating the length of the jack seeing it just from the mat. Skips are the only players who regularly stand at the head and then later deliver their bowls. Consequently, they know precisely the distance from jack to mat when they walk to the mat end of the rink. They don’t have to guesstimate: they can even pace it off if they wish! This is different with singles play. Only the marker is in the head. The singles competitors must, each in turn, eyeball the jack and from that, work out their proper weight. 

That is, unless you as the opposition deliver standard lengths, placing the mat on the tee and sending full length jacks or some other length which an experienced bowler can handle in his sleep. Don’t do it…..every time you get hold of the mat move it up the green and deliver anything except a jack on the front tee. That way the ‘Perennial Skip’ is challenged to estimate the length from the mat alone and you quite possibly have more experience doing that. Furthermore, if you have delivered the jack, you have your muscle memory to help you. 

Rolling your ‘natural length’ from different mat positions is a strategy I have used.

This may not bring victory but it can avoid what otherwise might be a blowout!

Social Lawn Bowls is Becoming Boring

I started playing lawn bowls seven years ago, I felt it was a challenging game both in terms of body control and strategic and tactical thinking. Sadly, the way social lawn bowls is being played today, in Portugal during the winter and in Canada during the summer, the game seems to be degrading towards boredom.

Skips seem more intent on chit-chatting with their opposite than working with their leads to choose the best jack length and mat position given the twists of the game. Front ends don’t communicate among themselves to improve their deliveries. Short jacks, jacks in the gutter, or jacks out of bounds are just dragged back into an approximately acceptable position rather than being sent back to the opposing lead for re-delivery.

It has apparently become socially unacceptable to move the mat more than three meters from the back ditch. “It’s just a practice game” I’m told when I ask about these things. Some practice: when the length more than 80% of the time is just between 27 and 30 meters. Some practice when the mat is 99% of the time within 2 to 3 meters of the back ditch. If it’s just practice why isn’t the careless bowler, who delivers a wrong bias, returned that bowl for another try? Why do they even keep score?

At least in Portugal, a match is 18 ends. In Canada, players frequently vote for as few as 10 ends and 12 ends is common. Why not?...... Well, bowls is a game that is designed to reward consistent execution. It is the length of the game that sorts out the meritorious from the plain lucky.

Look. People can choose to entertain themselves however they want. I accept this. But I think what new participants look for in a sport is something that is both challenging and vigorously contested. Lawn bowls cannot help being slower than other sports but it doesn’t need to become lackadaisical!  

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.