Yesterday I had the splendid opportunity of participating in a Lawn Bowling Tournament. As luck would have it, there is a lawn bowling court on my street (for serious) and I was tickled to be invited to play. To clarify, I was no doubt invited on account of my sparkling conversation rather than my lawn bowling merit... as I showed up a Lawn Bowling virgin (gasp!). Although, as it turns out, this gurl's has got some mad L.B. skillz... That's right... ME! Call it beginner's luck if you must, but do so at your own risk! I think I'm getting ahead of myself, though... Let's back up.
As I'm sure most of you are wondering, what exactly is lawn bowling? While many lawn games can may fall under the "sunbrella" of bowling on the law, true lawn bowling is most akin to Bocce Ball. BUT there are also some distinct differences. First being that each player has their own set of four balls, which are specifically fitted to their hands. Since I, along with all of the other participants in the tourney, had not yet made the investment in their own custom balls, we all had to get our hands fitted to balls prior to the match commencement (as you can imagine, the day was ripe with double entendres, of which, I will leave to your imagination ;).
Prior to the start of the tournament, all players were given a optional lesson by some "old pros" where we learned that depending on how you're holding the ball it will either curve around to the left or right when you roll it on the grass. Our "coach" was named "Chick" and it is my opinion, that he was the best... dude knew his stuff and had the most patient demeanor - which is my style of coaching all the way #teambob #biggestloseranyone?
These were not our coaches.. but they could have been.
The objective of the game is to get your ball closest to a smaller white ball, called "The Jack," which is rolled out at the beginning of the game and lined up vertically with the center of the "lane." The game is played in teams and whichever team's players bowls their ball(s) closest to the Jack, gets the point for that round. The winning team can earn up to as many points as they have balls within the the losing team's closest ball to the Jack. Have I got you sufficiently confused yet? :)
That pretty much sums it up except for the fact that beverages are highly encouraged in addition to proper lawn bowling attire. (That's a personal recommendation, not an official one, but I felt it should be noted nonetheless).
As I mentioned before, I fared fairly well and my team ended up coming in 2nd place in the tournament. And since I never figured out what 1st place won (this may have been due to the "beverages" mentioned above), I wasn't at all upset about our ranking. Here's a photo my teammate and I had snapped of the proximity of our balls to the Jack in one killer round.
Yes, I dyed my hair blonde! :)
A lovely way to spend a winter day in C-A-L-I-F-O-R-N-I-A.
*I had originally prepared for this post by gathering some creative and unique lawn game/backyard activity ideas, but I wasn't expecting to get so long-winded in my yarn-tellin' and so, in an attempt to avoid exceeding your attention span, I will be posting about said finds tomorrow. So check back here tomorrow, y'all hear?
