Lawn Bowls: The Game & How To Play it Well

By Robert C Tuck

This book provides information and techniques for bowlers of all ages and skill levels.

• Beginners will quickly learn enough to become competent at social games and in their initial pennant season.
• More experienced bowlers will find ideas that may help them to improve their basics; groove, green and weight. In particular the

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brighton Bowling Club
• Release date: Jul 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9780648862710

Robert C Tuck

The Author Robert (Bob) Tuck was a late entry to the game of Lawn Bowls. he has moved through many roles in the game - Coach - Umpire - Chair of Selectors Club President - Junior Coach -Tournament Director - Recruiter - Dishwasher. In recent years he has developed a web site www.getgameofbowls.com and written quarterly newsletters to over 800 subscribers including 400 bowling clubs

Book preview

‘Introduction

Lawn Bowls – The Game & How to Play it Well

This book provides basic information and techniques for bowlers of all ages and skill levels.

Beginners will be able to quickly learn enough to become competent bowlers at social games and in their initial pennant season.

More experienced bowlers will find ideas that may help them to improve their basics: groove, green and weight.

A variety of different practice routines will help club coaches

Board members and bowls coordinators will find lots of material to help in promoting their club, gaining new members, and running profitable tournaments

The History of the Game

Sir Francis Drake is reputed to have been playing bowls while the Spanish Armada sailed up the British Channel in 1588. Shakespeare references the sport in Act III of Richard II indicating that both men and women could be found on the bowling greens

As one English poet put it:

‘He was playing at Plymouth a rubber of bowls

When the great Armada came; But he said, "

They must wait their turn, good souls"

And he stooped and finished the game.

That picture, cherished by all patriots, was once committed to canvas by Seymour Lucas

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The origins of the game go back much further than Drake’s time.  Sculptured vases and ancient plaques show the game being played some four thousand years ago, and archaeologists have uncovered biased stone bowls from 5,000 B.C. which indicate our ancestors enjoyed the game of bowling more than seven thousand years ago. To read more look at the bowls canada web site

Historical evidence of bowls-like games have been found in the cultures of the Ancient Egyptians, the Aztecs, the early Polynesians, and various North American aboriginal cultures. There are records of organized lawn bowls being played as far back as the 12th century in Great Britain.  The bowls used in these early days were merely rounded, without bias. The bias was not introduced until 1522 due entirely (it is claimed), to the accidental breaking of a bowl by Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk whereby he rushed indoors and sawed-off an ornamental ball from a banister. Accordingly, one part was flat and it took a curving direction at the end of its run, instead of continuing on a straight line.

As with golf, the game of Bowls owes its organized existence to the Scots.  Following a meeting in Glasgow in 1848, attended by about two hundred players from various clubs all with different Laws for playing the game, W.W. Mitchell of Glasgow drew up a uniform code of Laws.  These are the basis of all subsequent Laws.

My journey through bowls began in 1953.

I was 12 years old and had a paying job!  With two other boys I operated the scoreboard for Sturt Cricket club in Saturday District Cricket at Unley Oval. This scoreboard was a mini copy of Adelaide Oval’s famous one, with numbers on rollers, batsmens’ names painted on quite heavy boards, and a telephone connection to the scorers. When the A grade team was playing there were up to 300 spectators and we were busy because we had to keep up with the total and the two batsmens’ scores. Changing the batsmens’ names was work for all three of us. 

Whenever the B grade was there we had time on our hands as we just had to do the one score and no names and I used to wander over to the Sturt Bowling Club, at the far end of the oval, and watch a lot of men older than my mum play lawn bowls, dressed in cricket whites, wearing funny hats, and using black bowls. 

I was surprised to see my family GP, Dr. Jack Petchell playing, and I suppose I wondered how someone as old as him could play this game. I didn’t know then that he was only 48 and had won the Australian National Bowls Championships in 1947. The photo on the right was in Glynn Bosisto’s ‘Bowling Along’. I remember thinking then that I would play lawn bowls when I was too old to play cricket.

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Cricket, Australian Rules Football, and Basketball were my sports and I played them all through high school and teachers’ college. As a young teacher, I was a keen cricket and football coach, taking one of those teams in every term while I was teaching between 1963 and 1974. I was involved in managing some of those school competitions and did coaching and umpiring qualifications in both.

My, not too illustrious, football career came to a crashing end in 1963 with a serious knee injury. I still played cricket until 1977, spending my last three seasons playing for Meningie where I had been appointed Deputy Principal of the Area School. With my four children in school sporting teams, I did cricket coaching for a few more years. In about 1980, my daughter was playing under 14 softball and they needed an umpire. The umpiring coordinator saw me, and this put off my bowling career by 14 years!

In 1995 I decided that my knees would no longer allow me to umpire softball. One of my friends had taken up bowls at the Reade Park club. I learned a little about the game from him and bought and read a good coaching book written by R.T. (Boomerang) Harrison. I remember, close to my 54th birthday, playing my first pennant game with a group of men, mostly older than me, dressed in cricket whites, wearing funny hats, and using black bowls.

It is amazing how much lawn-bowls has changed in the last 20 years. All white dress and black bowls are now rare in pennants. Remarkably, in my second and third years at the small Reade Park club, I made the final of the club singles. In 1999, I decided to move to the much larger Brighton Bowling Club, which was close to home, and the club I wanted to be in when I retired. Brighton also had some colour in their shirt!

In my first year at Brighton, the President approached me asking if I could use the computer the club had recently bought to help the selectors.  I wrote a useful little program, which worked well, halving selection time for the 10 sides. I soon found myself on the selection committee. I was on the club committee for 15 years, chairman of selectors, coach, umpire, president, recruiter, new building planner, dishwasher, night-owls manager, tournament director, and all sorts of other things.

In 2004 I was invited to join the Bowls South Australia Match and Programme Committee, where I still serve today. One of their duties was to do the draw for the large metro bowls competition. I have been involved in the introduction of three different computer systems.  Over the years at Brighton I have managed to get my name on the board for every club title except the singles.  With the help of arthroscopic surgery, I successfully played skip in the club’s top team for a few years 

After I had my knees replaced in 2006, I decided to play third, and then for about eight years I became a specialist leader. My skills were limited because I was close to being a dumper. The photo shows one of my best moments as a skipper. In the club’s top team 2005 we won 58 to 9.

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After developing the shooter’s stance shown in this book, I returned to happily playing third in a reasonable team in a much stronger Brighton club in 2019.

Books and Films About Lawn Bowls

The Great Australian Bowls Books of the 20th Century

In this book, I refer to and quote from some of the bowls books which were published a long time ago. These books were all written by bowlers who had demonstrated their skills by winning major events and representing their state or nation.

‘Bowls the Textbook of the Game. How to Become a Champion’ by R. T. (Boomerang) Harrison

This book was self-published by Harrison and printed by N.D.Leader Printers Tamworth in about 1937. It was reprinted almost every year, through publishers Wilke & Co Ltd, in the 1950s, and later by Henselite.

Harrison served in the Boer War He took up bowls in 1903, and won the Victorian