Disadvantage?

Over 60s club competition match this evening. Up against a fellow B Team player, experienced and tricky. Probably the most animated of bowlers too. The game is played to sixteen ends, so can't afford to give him a lead.

Arrive early to find both opponent and marker waiting for me. They've been playing in a club friendly during the afternoon which hasn't long finished. It's his choice of rinks. We're playing rink four, which he's been bowling on all afternoon. Gulp... I really do need a good start!

Forget a good start, think dream start. I'm 6-0 up after two ends. Has he really been playing on this rink for a couple of hours? Doesn't seem like it. Most of his deliveries are all over the place. Maybe he's unnerved at how accurate my bowls are.

He stages a bit of a rally around half way and closes the gap to two. That's the nearest he gets. A couple of threes on ends fourteen and fifteen mean I've won, 18-9 with one to play. We play the last end anyway, three to him.

Although I won by some margin, we both won eight ends. The difference? On some ends he got a single bowl right against the jack, but if he failed to do that I always had two or more surrounding the jack. So he generally won by a single bowl, I won by two or more. On a couple of occasions I knocked his bowl out to win the end by two. Very satisfying.

So that's a third quarter final I'm in and five out of five club competition wins. And my new Thomas Taylor Legacy SL bowls? Wonderful! They've got such a beautifully defined curve. Easy to think you've rolled the bowl too hard and too wide... until about three quarters up the green the bowl turns and turns, coming into the jack almost at right angles. Amazes opponents and is so satisfying.

Here's the scorecard.