Page 30 - Winter 2013

Page 30:Layout 1 09/02/2014 12:45 Page 1

30 GRIPS - THE CLAW

Basically, the claw grip is where the fingers are spead apart underneath
the bowl as in photo 5, usually with your outer two fingers partly up the
side of the bowl. Your your thumb would be more or less on top of the
bowl somewhere near the centre(photo 6 and 7) or on the top rings or
grips as in photo 8.
Alternatives to this would be the spread fingers and a thumb very
high up the side e.g. on the rings of the bowl near the top. With this type
5 5 of grip you really are gripping the bowl and you could turn your hand
over and the bowl would not fall out of your hand. In short if you kept
your fingers and thumbs in the same position and removed the bowl the
shape of your hand would look like a claw.
With this type of grip unless you have huge hands the bowl will
not sit in the palm of your hand as it would with the cradle grip. You
will generally find that the bowl with either sit on the mounds at the
base of your fingears or more usually on the lower portions of your fin-
gers. Theabove sums up the basic two grips that apply to bowls, both
indoor and out. In reality of course there are many different “grips” but
they are mostly variations of either the cradle or the claw.
OK so what is best for short mat bowls? This now comes down
6 6 to opinion and my answer is “if you were starting from scratch and you

had never held a bowl before then for various reasons I would be 100%
behind the cradle grip”.
The first main reason is that most players can physically hold a
much bigger bowl with the cradle grip than they can with the claw grip.
Considering that my personal advice is to play with nothing smaller
than a size 3 and that 5’s or perhaps 4’ are the best sizes for short mat
bowls.
WHAT!!! I can here the ladies often say “I’ve only got small
hands and I’m not strong enough to hold anything bigger than a 1”.
However, I have converted a number of ladies to the cradle grip and to
7 7 bigger bowls, as they were fed up having their marbles knocked around
the mat.
By all means continue with your existing bowls and your game
will continue as before but if you need or want to change then bigger is
better. If you don’t need to change then stay as you are.
As for my second main reason, to choose the cradle, on balance I
beleve you can get a smoother delivery. I’ve noticed over the years that
more often than not, wobblers are delivered by people using the claw
grip not the cradle grip.
At this point please remember if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Its easy
to tie onself up in knots with theories and changes in order to improve
8 8 your game but if you don’t have a genuine problem then don’t change
anything.

It would appear there there are continuing discussions on what is and isn’t a foot fault. I thought
that this was clear with most people but to “finalise” matters I am currently in the process of preparing
an article on delivering bowls and foot-faulting, with a number of photos. These will clearly show legin-
timateand non legitimate delivery positions and will also discuss the two main delivery methods for our
short mat game, either a step forward or the various fixed stances. If you have any questions or want any
other topics discussed the please contact me.
Weaf