Summer Sports - Bowls
Patrick Hulbert (second from right) competing with Ean Morton, Louis Ridout and Josh Hadfield for England in China and Hong Kong in the Tiger Bowls tournament
you are about to draw shot to win the game and you see your bowl ‘stick’ in a lush and overgrown green patch five yards away from the jack, and it pretty much stops your bowl dead. You have not won the match, you have just lost it! Or, alternatively, you have drawn the shot, you celebrate, but wait ... your bowl is still trickling on that bare brown patch, and it carries on running a yard and out of the head! It is very frustrating when either of these scenarios occur, and they can alter the course of the game dramatically and, therefore, as an international bowler, this is a type of surface I tend to dread rather than relish.
GRASS
Green All One Colour: This correlates with the aforementioned description of a ‘consistent pace’. If the green is all one colour, a bowler can be relatively assured that the surface will, at least, be consistent with regards to pace. You can never be positive about the line being consistent until you get on the green and play.
I prefer not to see the grass too green, as this usually suggests that the greenkeeper is more obsessed with how the green looks than how it plays. It is more than likely that the green has been over-watered, and that the greenkeeper is panicking too much about the surface
turning too brown, which is a real shame, as there is nothing wrong with a brown surface. Not mentioning any names, our club has, in the past, had problems with one volunteer coming down to water the green because he liked the surface slow. Not only was the act very selfish, it also meant that we had an influx of moss as it thrives in the moist conditions. I have seen bowling greens that are
brown all over. This is very rare now, as greenkeepers are scared of their greens becoming scorched and, therefore, apply a plethora of water to the greens. However, when I have seen bare, brown greens - usually because the watering system has broken - I have not been
APRIL/MAY 2012 PC 59
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