Outdoor bowling rules

That last row is the whole problem. Search “outdoor bowling set” and you are shown skittles; search “lawn bowling rules” and you are shown a sport with a federation. Our best outdoor bowling set page covers the sets you can actually buy, which are the skittles kind.

Bowls is played on a flat green. The published green length in the direction of play is not less than 31 meters and not more than 40 meters, divided into rinks of about five meters across. That is a club facility, not a back garden, which is the honest reason this site sells skittles sets rather than bowls.

An end, in order

1. A player places the mat and delivers the jack along the rink. Delivery is defined as releasing the jack or bowl with an underarm movement; if it slips out of the hand, the player picks it up and starts again.
2. The jack must finish at least 23 meters from the mat line. It is then centred on the rink at the distance it came to rest.
3. If the jack comes to rest less than two meters from the front ditch, it is moved out to a mark two meters from the ditch edge.
4. Players alternate deliveries, each bowl curving in on its bias, until every bowl has been played.
5. The end is scored: one shot for each bowl closer to the jack than the opponent's nearest. Then the next end is played back down the rink in the other direction.

Every set we looked at publishes the equipment and nothing else. The Toy Time set states ten pins at 3 by 11 inches, two balls at 2.75 inches, a 7.75 lb set weight and an age floor of three. It states nothing about lane length, pin spacing or scoring, and the listing says so. STERLING publishes an 11 inch pin height and leaves the rest blank in the same way.

So the rules are yours. These five decisions are the ones that cause arguments if you do not settle them before the first roll.

• Lane length. Long enough that the ball has slowed before it arrives, or pins fly rather than fall. On cut grass that is usually around twenty feet; on a long lawn it will be shorter, because grass is the brake.
• Pin spacing. A ten-pin triangle with roughly a hand's width between pins. Closer and a single ball clears the lot; wider and nothing chains.
• Rolls per turn. Two, as in ten-pin bowling, is the usual choice and the reason the sets ship with two balls.
• Scoring. One point per pin down is the simplest and keeps children in the game. Ten-pin's strike and spare bonuses work fine too; just pick one.
• Re-setting. Someone has to stand the pins back up. Agree whose job it is or it becomes the host's job all afternoon.

Skittles is the game on this site most sensitive to grass height. A painted softwood pin falls over at a touch on short grass and refuses to fall at all in long grass, because the ball stops two feet short. If your lawn is shaggy or sloped, read leveling ground for yard games first, or pick a rolling game that tolerates it — the comparison in bocce vs lawn bowling is mostly about exactly this.