Lawn Bowls

Our club house is small but cosy iot is like many dotted around the UK!

The outdoor lawn bowling season normally covers from early spring to late summer.

I enjoy playing and find it relaxing. We are all friendly and enjoy chatting and bantering as we play.

Strolling up the bowling green after each ‘end’ (game) of bowls is completed on a fine spring or summers day is wonderful. A slight cooling breeze with a clear blue sky except for a few white fluffy clouds and hearing  birdsong  makes most pleasant  backdrop to our games.

At it’s height, the club had 20-30 members, which was excellent for it’s size and location.

  Sadly over the last few years, club membership has dwindled, mainly due to older members becoming too inform to play, or sadly passing away and going to that  great bowling green in the sky (wonderful if real!). They are missed and pleasant memories linger.

My club currently has a quorum of about six-eight  regular players with four more who attend semi regularly; we hope to get more new members.

 Yes  bowls is perceived to be an older persons game, especially those who have retired and are 50 plus.  Many younger people do play

Other local clubs which are larger  have a more varied age range. These clubs also have more social facilities such as a bar etc. In large cities and towns with the cliché 24/7 lifestyle and increasing immigration, lawn bowls is seen as a very much minority past time. The game still thrives in many smaller English/British towns and villages etc. Work retirees with more time do join too.

After we play  (a game is normally 2-3 hours) on a Saturday and Sunday afternoon, we adjourn to the clubhouse next to the bowling green, for tea, biscuits, cake and a chat… very English and British!

 The game or match itself is not complicated.  I like to think it like  like snooker in some respects, the way the ‘bias’ of the bowls (or woods as we call them)  can be used to block or knock the opponents bowl away from the smaller target white ball (called the jack) or use rebound of an opponent bowl to get near the jack. The player who gets his or her bowls nearest to the jack wins.

 If you get the chance to play give it a go you may instantly like it, I did and was hooked. Sadly at present,  I cannot play as much as I would like and miss the friendly camaraderie you can get in a club.

A Brief  History of Bowls

As histroy students should know the most famous story in lawn bowls is with Sir Frances Drake and the Spanish Armada.  On July 18, 1588, Drake was involved in a game at Plymouth Hoe when he was notified that the Spanish Armada were approaching.  His immortalised response was that “We still have time to finish the game and to thrash the Spaniards, too.”   He then proceeded to finish the match which he lost before embarking on the fight with the Armada which he won.  Whether this famous story really took place has been heavily debated.

Bowls has been traced certainly to the 13th century, and conjecturally to the 12th. The world’s oldest surviving bowling green is the Southampton Old Bowling Green, which was first used in 1299

The English Bowling Association was founded in 1903 and it is very well organised sport which hosts numerous competitions from the club to the national level. The sport is most popular in the South of England with thousands of devotees.

Today the sport is played in over 40 countries such as USA. Australia, New Zealand, S Africa Hong Kong with more than 50 member national authorities. The home of the modern game is still Scotland with the World Bowls centre in Edinburgh.

Game

Lawn bowls is usually played on a large, rectangular, precisely levelled and manicured grass or synthetic surface known as a bowlig green which is divided into parallel playing strips called rinks. In the simplest competition, singles, one of the two opponents flips a coin to see who wins the “mat” and begins a segment of the competition (in bowling parlance, an “end”), by placing the mat and rolling the jack to the other end of the green to serve as a target. Once it has come to rest, the jack is aligned to the centre of the rink and the players take turns to roll their bowls from the mat towards the jack and thereby build up the “head”.

A bowl may curve outside the rink boundary on its path, but must come to rest within the rink boundary to remain in play. Bowls falling into the ditch are dead and removed from play, except in the event when one has “touched” the jack on its way. “Touchers” are marked with chalk and remain alive in play even though they are in the ditch. Similarly if the jack is knocked into the ditch it is still alive unless it is out of bounds to the side resulting in a “dead” end which is replayed, though according to international rules the jack is “respotted” to the centre of the rink and the end is continued. After each competitor has delivered all of their bowls (four each in singles and pairs, three each in triples, and two bowls each in fours), the distance of the closest bowls to the jack is determined (the jack may have been displaced) and points, called “shots”, are awarded for each bowl which a competitor has closer than the opponent’s nearest to the jack. For instance, if a competitor has bowled two bowls closer to the jack than their opponent’s nearest, they are awarded two shots. The exercise is then repeated for the next end, a game of bowls typically being of twenty one ends.

Lawn bowls is played on grass and variations from green to green are common. Greens come in all shapes and sizes, fast, slow, big crown, small crown and so on.

Lawn bowls can also be played inside too and is known as indoor bowls. Our club leased a hall and had a bowls carpet smaller than a proper outside rink/green, but enough to play a decent game in bad weather and winter!

Scoring

Scoring systems vary from competition to competition. Games can be decided when:

• a player in a singles game reaches a specified target number of shots (usually 21 or 25).
• a team (pair, triple or four) has the higher score after a specified number of ends.

Games to a specified number of ends may also be drawn. The draw may stand, or the opponents may be required to play an extra end to decide the winner. These provisions are always published beforehand in the event’s Conditions of Play.

In the Laws of the Sport of Bowls,  the winner in a singles game is the first player to score 21 shots. In all other disciplines (pairs, triples, fours) the winner is the team who has scored the most shots after 21/25 ends of play. Often local tournaments will play shorter games (often 10 or 12 ends). Some competitions use a “set” scoring system, with the first to seven points awarded a set in a best-or-three or best-of-five set match. As well as singles competition, there can be two (pairs), three (triples) and four-player (fours) teams. In these, teams bowl alternately, with each player within a team bowling all their bowls, then handing over to the next player. The team captain or “skip” always plays last and is instrumental in directing his team’s shots and tactics. The current method of scoring in the professional tour such as the World Bowls Tour .Each set consists of nine ends and the player with the most shots at the end of a set wins the set. If the score is tied the set is halved. If a player wins two sets, or gets a win and a tie, that player wins the game. If each player wins a set, or both sets end tied, there is a 3-end tiebreaker to determine a winner.

Bias of bowls

Bowls are designed to travel a curved path because of a weight  bias which was originally produced by inserting weights in one side of the bowl. This is no longer permitted by the rules and bias is now produced entirely by the shape of the bowl. A bowler determines the bias direction of the bowl in his hand by a dimple or symbol on one side. Regulations determine the minimum bias allowed, and the range of diameters (11.6 to 13.1 cm), but within these rules bowlers can and do choose bowls to suit their own preference. They were originally made from lignum vitae, a dense wood giving rise to the term “woods” for bowls, but are now more typically made of a hard plastic composite material.

Bowls were once only available coloured black or brown but they are now available in a variety of colours. They have unique symbol markings engraved on them for identification. Since many bowls look the same, coloured, adhesive stickers or labels are also used to mark the bowls of each team in bowls matches. Some local associations agree on specific colours for stickers for each of the clubs in their area. Provincial or national colours are often assigned in national and international competitions. These stickers are used by match officials to distinguish teams.

Bowls have symbols unique to the set of four for identification. The side of the bowl with a larger symbol within a circle indicates the side away from the bias. That side with a smaller symbol within a smaller circle is the bias side toward which the bowl will turn. It is not uncommon for players to deliver a “wrong bias” shot from time to time and see their carefully aimed bowl crossing neighbouring rinks rather than heading towards their jack.

When bowling there are several types of delivery. “Draw” shots are those where the bowl is rolled to a specific location without causing too much disturbance of bowls already in the head. For a right-handed bowler, “forehand draw” or “finger peg” is initially aimed to the right of the jack, and curves in to the left. The same bowler can deliver a “backhand draw” or “thumb peg” by turning the bowl over in his hand and curving it the opposite way, from left to right. In both cases, the bowl is rolled as close to the jack as possible, unless tactics demand otherwise. A “drive” or “fire” or “strike” involves bowling with force with the aim of knocking either the jack or a specific bowl out of play – and with the drive’s speed, there is virtually no noticeable (or, at least, much less) curve on the shot. An “upshot” or “yard on” shot involves delivering the bowl with an extra degree of weight (often referred to as “controlled” weight or “rambler”), enough to displace the jack or disturb other bowls in the head without killing the end. A “block” shot is one that is intentionally placed short to defend from a drive or to stop an oppositions draw shot. The challenge in all these shots is to be able to adjust line and length accordingly, the faster the delivery, the narrower the line or “green”.