Playing Indoor Lawn Bowling for the First Time!

Reconnected with my friend in my garden

 Last week, I reconnected with a friend from my younger days and invited her to our house for coffee.


We sat in my garden, had a great time catching up with one another with the latest happenings.

Indoor lawn bowling

Today, B. invited me to go lawn bowling with her in a community centre in the city of Markham.

Each player starts with four balls

As it turned out to be a humid day, we were all dressed in our summer outfits ready for lawn bowling action. I had seen people lawn bowling  before but never had the desire or the opportunity to try it myself.

I thought I was going for lawn bowling outside, but to my surprise, it was indoors!

There were four people on our team today.  Each one of us started with a set of four wooden balls engraved with a different picture on top and bottom of each set.

At least one of the player's feet  must be on the carpet when playing

A piece of carpet was placed about 6-7 step away from the edge of the court. Each player must be stepping on the carpet when rolling the ball onto the lawn.

A yellow ball is placed at the other end of the court

 The goal of the game is to get your ball as close to the yellow ball placed on the opposite end of the lawn as possible.

The player with the ball closest to the yellow ball  wins

Like any game - it looks easy when you watch other people playing it until you try it yourself.



We did not have to hit the ball to win, just be the player with one of the four balls closest to the yellow ball.

Two balls with very similar distance to the yellow ball

At times, there could be two balls appeared to be the same distance to the yellow ball.
 In this case, the referee would pull out his/her tape measure to obtain the exact distance of each ball to determine the winner.









Though the game seemed slow and not a strenuous sport, I could feel my hamstrings being exercised!

Two hours of lawn bowling went by really fast as we talked and laughed with our team mates.

It was a fun and sociable game indeed!

R.T.
Markham, Ontario