‘Diamond Play’
Diamond Play
Tag: Sport
Blue Bat Bowls
‘Blue Bat Bowls’
The summer lawn bowls season has just finished, as autumn descends.Tons of great memories!
The sport is a passion for me – thought I’d share a pic of my new set of bowls, purchased a few weeks ago, replete with my favourite bat logo.
For the technically minded, they are slightly heavier than my old bowls, with a marginally wider trajectory, for better wind stability.
But the new bowls won’t magically make my game better – that’s up to me. It’s all in your mind as they say. The three golden rules of the game are adjust, adjust, adjust!
Carried On The Breeze
‘Carried On The Breeze’
Beach Polo, Parangahau Beach
‘Beach Polo, Parangahau Beach’
(#10 in a series of shots of small town New Zealand)
Play What’s In Front Of You
Art and writing teach us much; I derive a great deal of benefit from the creative offerings of my fellow bloggers on this platform (thank you!).
So too, sport and games give us an understanding of ourselves.
My particular sporting activity is lawn bowls – above are photos from an early morning solo practice session and a recent regional championship I competed in.
One of many learnings I have taken from the game I love is this:
You can only play what’s in front of you.
Whether it’s the level of tournament and opposition; the weather conditions; the state of the playing surface, or any other variable, you just have to accept it and deal with it.
That means you can’t always do everything you would like to do or indeed are capable of, as the game situation, in that particular moment, may not require those optimal things.
You must constantly review what the game is demanding of you, right now.
No time to dwell on the end or game just played, or to “future trip” about the next one.
You also can’t do anything about what you can’t control – for instance, your opponent’s brilliance (or lack of it).
When it’s your turn on the mat, all you have is the bowl in your hand , and what lies in front of you on the green, in that moment.
Sometimes you will believe that discretion is the better part of valour, choose to play safe and tuck the risky shots away. At other moments, you might see a shot that no-one else thinks in on, trust your instincts and “just do it” (in the words of the great activewear philosopher Nike).
Game situation is a fantastic mindfulness tool !
These are, of course, lessons for life as well as sport.
Play what’s in front of you – for that is the only thing you can do.
Wet Welcome
Following on from the sprinkling I got and mentioned in the previous post Hollyhock, things got a whole lot wetter at the bowls tournament venue today.
Lawn bowls, it may surprise, is not an underwater sport.
But rain it did today in Auckland, right on cue for my biggest bowls day of the year.
After 45 days or so without rain.
It was a deluge at times, rendering the greens unplayable.
A drought breaker.
A wet welcome…
Hollyhock
I went up to my lawn bowls club a few hours ago.
I needed a last minute practice ahead of one of the biggest events on the Auckland bowls calendar – the men’s singles championship.
However, I was thwarted in my attempt to practice when the automatic spinkler system came on by surprise. F**k! Got a bit damp…
Dragging my bowls bag out of a potential soaking, I admired and photographed this hollyhock, with its splendid crimson tones, in the late afternoon sun. The time wasn’t completely wasted then.
I will be hope to blossom in the tournament tomorrow, as opposed to bleeding blood red…
Eight Blue Bowls
Not the bowls you eat out of, but lawn bowls, the sport I play (it’s a British Commonwealth thing and generally a summer pastime).
This was earlier in the month, when my fours team , just coincidentally mind, played with blue bowls(two per player in that format).
So pretty I had to take picture!
That was about as pretty and together as it got – our play that day was distinctly average…
(PS: The pair on the left with the bat motif are mine)
The Bowler II
The summer lawn bowls season has just ended in New Zealand, and I thought I should mark the end of the high time in my sport with a shot of my friend Vince in full flight on the grass at the Auckland Men’s Champ Singles last month. Nice style!
Played him that day, got beaten 21-9.He can be pretty bloody good ….
No dice then, but that’s sport – put the poor games behind you, learn and move on. There’ll be other opportunities.
Not that the sport goes completely into hibernation, just less intense competition and a move onto artificial surfaces over the winter.
Butt there is nothing like the feel and subtle variation offered by natural, grass greens and the warmth of the sun on your back as you play.
See the below link on this blog for more:
My Bowling Happy Place
We all should have at least one physical place that makes us joyful, a spot where you can just be. I have a few as it happens and thought I would round off the series of lawn bowls posts with a shot of my own club and its green in Auckland.Sometimes noisy with the sounds of bowlers playing,at other times it is just me there in the parklike grounds,with the sounds of birds and cattle,the wind in the poplars and pines.Bliss…
The Bowler
My friend Teo in action at The New Zealand 2018-19 Nationals …all balance and fluidity.
On The Green
Brightly coloured lawn bowls on a bowling green
I took up the sport of lawn bowls (played throughout the British Commonwealth in the main) some thirteen years ago ,and it is something I just adored from the get go. I play it competitively as well as socially. It’s like chess on steroids – a great amalgam of eye/hand skills, individual technique, strategy, rules and etiquette ,combined with an immense variability of people (team mates and opponents)and playing conditions. Complex at times but a simple game at heart.
Those blue bowls with the bat motif are mine by the way. Every set of bowls is unique in size, weight and trajectory as well as decoration and are very personal to the bowler. Playing with bowls other than my own is like walking on the moon, sorta feels unnatural.
You learn a lot from playing a sport, not the least of which is not to take yourself, your mistakes ,and losses, so seriously. Mistakes and losses happen and you are what you are. And, in the end, if the game is not fun, maybe you are taking it way too seriously!
Ebb Then Flood 