A Winning Strategy

Bowls can seem like a game of luck. Your opponent goes and moves the jack, but it never seems to end up by your bowls. No matter what you do, you find your bowls just end up in the “wrong” place. However, there may be more than just luck at play here.

The process of “building the head” is a systematic way of ensuring you are getting your bowls in the right place to take advantage of whatever may happen.

In this blog we take you through the process of building the head, and will look at some “best case” scenarios.

Firstly, let’s look at some terms. What is “the head” in the first place? The “head” is the area around the jack, wherever it may be. It is not limited to where the jack was originally placed, therefore if the jack moves during an end, the area known as “the head” will move with it.

Your first shots should always be to get as close to the jack as possible.

The aim with the first few shots is to try and gain an early shot advantage whilst there are fewer bowls in play. As the end progresses and bowls start getting in the way you may lose the ability to draw onto the jack, so it’s important to take your opportunity while you can.

Of course, if you miss with your first few shots, you may end up spending most of the end on this part!

Once you have a couple of bowls near the jack it’s time to consider getting some bowls behind the head.

If the jack moves it’s only going backwards, so getting something behind is important.

At this stage you will be looking to get your back shots either directly behind the jack, or covering groups of your opponent’s bowls.

You do this for two reasons:

• you place a bowl directly behind the jack, as this is the most likely place it will go

• you place a bowl near your opponents bowls to “cover” them. This means that if the jack moves towards them you may, at best gain the shot, or at worst keep their possible gains down to a minimum

You can predict where the jack might move. For example, if a bowl is in front of the jack, slightly to the left, you can be pretty sure that if the bowl is moved it will push the jack to the right. You want to place your bowl behind the jack in the area where it might move.

This is important, because the team who are down will likely try to play an attacking shot to move the shot bowl, or the jack. Therefore this tactic can be a defensive move if you are holding shot, or an attacking move if you are down a shot.

Finally, if you have covered all possible defensive positions, you want to get your bowls into positions to make more shots with the lowest possible risk.

An example of this is to try and get into a count without aiming to get right on the jack. If your opponent hasn’t got a shot near the jack you can aim to get a bowl wide of the jack, but still within the count.

Bowls is a game of consistency, so the team who builds heads the best stands the best chance of winning in the long run.

Conclusion

Building the head is all about getting good position, both in terms of getting bowls close to the jack, but also in getting bowls in good covering positions.

It is an art, rather than a science, so whilst the steps in this guide are the foundations, you will learn over time where you need to place your bowls.