Lawn Bowling

our view at the park... not to shabby

Last week on our date night, we were watching lawn bowling and got invited for a lesson this week. This was on Adam's bucket list, so of course we were game to do it. Wednesdays are open bowl so they have a quick lesson and then a pick up game. There ended up only being 2 people that stayed past the lesson and they were just practicing so we just played a game ourselves. It was really fun.

The bowls are not perfectly round. They are biased or lopsided which causes them to curl around. This game is very similar to curling, even the terminology is the same. It's crazy. So each bowl has a unique symbol on each side, one side has a small symbol and the other side has a larger version of  the same symbol. You bowl with the smaller symbol on the inside or as our teacher, Steve, said, "You bowl towards the smaller symbol." Each set of bowls have a different symbol so you can tell them apart.

 You can see the two other people that were in our lesson. There are up to 4 bowls per person depending on if you are in a singles, doubles, triples, or quad game.

 To start off the game, the lead (first person bowling) rolls the jack (the small white ball, think bocce ball on this one). You have to get the jack past a certain line (hogline) but still within bounds. The skip (basically team captain- they call the shots and are the last to bowl) then maintains the distance of the jack but centers it within the rink. Then the idea is similar to curling; you are trying to get it closest to the jack and whichever team is closest scores and they score as many bowls as they have before the opposing teams bowls.

You have to keep at least one foot on that beige mat when you bowl (not throw) the bowl. The rest is up to you/skip. There is strategy just like in curling to block other people and to hit each others bowls out of the way. It seems like a really fun game. I'm not quite sure of all the rules because it depends on how many players are in the game but it seems really fun ;) We were really glad we tried it.

We have friends coming in for the weekend so I'm really excited. Hope y'all have a great holiday weekend!