If only I had done that 17 years ago

Bowling News

Two things happened to me last week which made me rethink how I had ever tackled crown green bowling and I decided that I had missed a real opportunity to be a better bowler than I am which in itself may be no great ambition.

Both these things happened at the same match I was playing in.

1. As we gathered green side before the match I was talking to a new bowler who had joined our team this year and he asked me what I knew about the neutral green we were to play on and were there any parts on the green to avoid. I struggled to offer him anything really helpful or constructive.

2. I had a really good win and thought about how I could use that victory to prepare me better for the next time I visited this same green.

I decided that the answer to both queries could be the same. Why hadn't I written down all the marks and experiences of each green I had played on over the 17 years I had been bowling competitively to serve me better the next time I visited that green?

It is such a simple solution requiring minimum effort on my part to potentially make me better prepared for my next visit to a green. For someone who likes to believe that I am a well-organised individual, which has always been important to me in my working life and it was a bit of a wake-up call to me on how I had failed to take full advantage of all that playing experience over many years.

I started to think if it was too late to start collecting this information to better inform me for my next visit. If I had done that from day one I would now have a comprehensive record of each green in the area to use to inform me of what marks suit my game and equally important which marks to avoid.

All such information is useless should the weather conditions be different for as we all know greens can be very different during a July heatwave to that on a cloudy wet Monday in April. But at least I would have some information to hand so that when passed the jack for the first end I would have some sort of plan how to tackle the green rather than starting from scratch every time I visited a green. I am not one of those who can rely on their memory to tease out all the experiences from over many years to benefit from and even less so as time goes on

Thinking it through a little further I realised that it was not just the greens that I had a vast memory loss on but also all the opponents I had played against over the years. Some players I have beaten and lost to had distinct playing preferences - left-handers, long corner to corner marks, short round marks, straight across the crown, up and down the edges and there are more.

I have 17 years of experiences that I have failed to benefit from. What a waste! Is it too late to start afresh and collect such information to benefit me in the future? Does anyone out there have their own record of the greens they have played on and has it helped them over the years?