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Bowlers - improve your draw bowling by 20% for less than the cost of a cup of coffee.
Robert (Bob) Tuck, the originator of getagameofbowls, has recently written a book called Lawn Bowls: The Game & How To Play It Well. You can find out more about the book from this link or read part of the chapter on getting your weight here
You can buy the printed book for $24 posted or as an ebook for less than $5 on all platforms.

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Skins Tournaments - Six different games, all called skins

Using the Mat - to get around a short bowl

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2015 Rule Change - changes the way to play two shots

Singles Tournaments - bowlers like this profitable 1 day singles

Getagame Gazette
volume 2 no 3 August 2016

Articles In This Edition

Would You Like to Play Bowls in China?

How Do You Get The Weight?

The Lawn Bowls Movies

Entering Pennant Results Accurately

Play Bowls in Hong Kong and China in March 2017
In 2013 the Bowls World Cup was played in Adelaide and Brighton Bowling Club hosted the China Team, who then invited us to enter a team to the Tiger Tour.

Brighton has sent teams in 2013,2015 and 2016 and those who have attended have all found it to be the best experience of their bowling life (I have been lucky to have been on all three teams)

This year we have some men and women who want to go, but not enough to send teams for both men's and women's competitions.

LION DANCE AT TIGER TOUR DINNER

The tour involves Hong Kong (March 11-12)_Shenzhen (March 13-15) Zhuhai (March 16-18) The cost is very reasonable - should be less the $2500 including all meals, twin share hotels and airfares

You can download exerpts from a video I made of the 2013 tournament. Tiger Tour 2013

If you are interested in joining us in March 2017 (singles or couples with 1 or 2 bowlers) please find details on this link. To express your interest or if you need more information please ring me on 0434 898 913 or email me at bob@paxtoncat.com.au

How to Get The Weight
Almost every book written about bowls gives lots of information about how you get the green, but information on getting the weight is very scarce.

The internet is not very helpful. In the You Tube Coaching Index I wrote for a previous Gous gggazette I found only one video on the subject.

Here are quotes from one current and two older sources.

Bowls Australia Club Coach Manual
"It can take hours of practice (or even years) to master finding the correct weight. To adjust the weight of a delivery lock in the feeling of how it felt when the bowl left your finger. Have a conscious memory of the level of effort/momentum placed on the bowl, then bowl harder or softer or the same depending on the result.

Some of the ways to achieve this are
• Increase or decrease the length of backswing
• Use bodyweight by quickening or slowing yoor tempo when you step forward into the shot"
You can purchase this manual from The Bowls Australia online store

Bowls -the textbook of the game (R T Harrison)

Throughout his book Harrison places great emphasis on grooving the delivery and there is no doubt he is right about this. If your delivery is not grooved there is no chance of achieving small variations in weight.

"Length, strength, touch, control of the bowl comes with practice. To secure these essentials a foundation a foundation or grounding has to be carefully prepared."

He recommends using a three jack method which I have expanded upon here

Harrison's caption for the photo on is

"To be correctly attired at bowls is to have mounted the first rung on the ladder of success"

Bowling Along (Glynn Bosisto)

Bosisto emphasizes the necessity for lots of solo practice.- he admits that he was probably considered unfriendly by some members at his clubs because of this preference.

On the matter of weight control he rejects mechanical methods

"I believe the principle of close bowling is not governed by length of step but by the timing, propulsion and spin given by arm wrist and fingers at the precise moment of delivery. Success, too, stems from the action of grooming all movements to enable the same delivery every time"

The books give no clear methods to enable you to vary your weight at will, but they all agree about this

"To achieve weight control you must have a well grooved delivery"

If you are sure your delivery is well grooved, here are some methods you might try to improve your weight control

Mechanical

Vary the length of your step

Logically the longer the step the bigger the swing. This definitely works but might upset the groove of your delivery and will result in difference in weight which are bigger than desired

Increase the amplitude of your pendulum swing by changing the height of your bowling hand at the start of your delivery.

I used to believe in this. The method I used was to look at the front corner of the mat when in the stance position and line up points on the bowl, wrist or arm. The closer the line of sight is to the front of the bowl the lower the arm position, the shorter the backswing and the shorter the bowl. There is no doubt this works – try bowling three consecutive bowls looking at your wrist, back of the bowl and front of the bowl. However the variations achieved by this method are too big to allow high level competition on fast greens. It is probably worth trying on greens running 10 seconds or less

Training Your Brain

All three of the above sources really come down to this. You have to train your brain to allow you to minutely vary the speed at which you release the bowl

Here are some suggestions to improve your weight control

DO
Practice often and individually, and when practising continually vary the length by small amounts
Sometimes use two markers at each end – try to draw within one mat length with your first bowl at the long marker and if you succeed try to draw your second bowl behind by 50cm to 1 metre. If you miss the weight with your first correct to the marker with your second. Do the same to the shorter marker.
Vary the mat position continually and never deliver more than two consecutive bowls at the same length
At other times put three markers at each end starting 2 metres apart. Bowl long, shorter, shorter and aim your 4th at the one you missed by the most, varying mat position deach end. As you increase your skill reduce the distance between the markers

If you do these activities for an hour you will probably put down 100 bowls and give yourself worthwhile cardiac exercise

DO NOT
Practice by yourself with one marker at each end and placing the mat at the same length every end

Practice by ‘rolling up’ with three or more other players putting bowls down in turn and never varying the length. This untrains your brain as the time between two consecutive bowls is too long. Scroungers is the only form of bowls in which you do not put down 2 bowls in less than 30 seconds. In one hour spent rolling up you will probably not put down more than 25 bowls.

It is fun to roll up but don’t count it as practice

When I refer to markers I mean half tennis balls. Why would you use a jack unless you are practising a skill which involves moving the jack?

The Lawn Bowls Movies

I was looking for a film to download and a saw a film called ‘BlackBall’. I thought it was probably about snooker and as such it was worth looking at the summary. To my surprise it was about Lawn Bowls, so I paid my $4 and downloaded it.

The film was made shortly after Crackerjack and possibly was an attempt a make a British follow up to the moderately successful Australian film. The professional reviewers canned it giving it a rating less than 2 stars, but the general viewers who bothered to write a review loved it. I could not find any reason to agree with them. I like British comedy but this film let the genre down.

The problem with the film was in that it lampooned lawn bowls in a way that no viewer of the film could possibly be inspired to try out the game

Crackerjack also poked fun at the game but in a way which bowlers like me could laugh at without being offended. Most of us as I saw exaggeration of many members of our clubs all over Australia

Crackerjack has helped the game of bowls grow in the years since it was on our screens and is still funny today. It has probably helped the growth of the game through barefoot bowling and night owls.

I wrote Did Crackerjack Change the Bias of Australians About Lawn Bowls? for the first edition of GGGazette.

Please view both films and let me know whether you agree with me ( both are available on UTUBE)

Entering Pennant Results Accurately

Three years ago Bowls Australia introduced the IMG (Now SportsTG) software for the whole of the game of bowls.

The initial brief had a serious error for pennant control - it did not allow for the the pennant draw. This resulted in the Skipper's tables being totally inaccurate unless the administrators spent many hours getting them right (the problem had a simple solution - just make the skippers table optional - but for some reason this did not happen)

The problem was only solved this year when the ability to move players by dragging and dropping while seeing opponents sides was introduced. However the program still has traps for inexperienced users.

Here is a procedure for entering results from the cards when you are the home side

Locate the fixture and log on as the home side

Click on the teams tag

Drag and drop your home teams so that the players match the opposition teams on the card (you can move your teams but not your opponents)

When the teams are lined up number the cards in the order they appear on the screen

Click on the match tag and enter the results in the order of the card numbers

GET A GAME OF BOWLS INFORMATION

Each time you receive this newsletter would you

Check that all your weekly social games are listed and make sure that the information shown is still accurate. Where social games change with the season it is best to edit them when they change

Make sure that any tournaments planned by your club have been listed.

You can list your weekly social games as tournaments each week. This will give them better exposure in your state. When doing this you can show your prizemoney and sponsor if you have one. Once you have listed the first game you can list subsequent weeks with only 3 clicks

Editing and Partial Listing of Tournaments

You can now edit tournaments by going to the bottom of the entry page where it gives you a list of all tournaments previously entered by your club. You can change any of the details except the date.

If you know the date, the type of tournament and the expected prizemoney (eg Fours Men (2 day) 21st March 2017 $3000. you could partially list the game and put put something like Please reserve the dates, more details laterin the special conditions box

If you also know the sponsors name and the tournament deserves state or nation featuring (usually state $2000 or more, national $5000 or more your choice) you could do this at the incomplete stage and give your sponsor much more exposure in the state and national featured lists

Add 'Find a Club' to your Favourites

The 'find a club' section of get a game provides your quickest possible means of finding the phone number and location of any club in Australia - it is well worthwhile to have that link in your favorites

It also provides links to 995 clubs with web sites and 187 clubs which have a facebook page and no web site

Please make an effort to put one or more links to get a game on your web site

Apart from a simple link like 'Lawn Bowls Tournaments in Australia' to the tournament listing, you can put in links to some of the other aspects of the site. The addition of 'Learning the Game' section should be of interest to all of your members, not only your coaches, and there is no better way to 'find a club' than to use the getagame link.

You can also put a link in your page to the weekly social games at your club like this one for Chatswood NSW Having this link would save your webmaster the work of editing the club web page whenever you alter your social games, and in most cases supply more details about your weekly socials than is currently on your web page

PREVIOUS EDITIONS OF GGGAZETTE

If you were not on the mailing list for previous newsletters you can see them from these links

August 2016

The Great Lawn Bowls Instructional Books

How Do You Get The Green

Five games like lawnbowls you could try this summer

Whch is the Most Important Shot in Lawn Bowls

July 2016

Law Change Discourages Oldest and Newest Pennant Players

The Australian Open - A Fabulous Event

The rise of the South Australian men

A snapshot of the sport of bowls in Australia

The History of Lawn Bowls and its equipment