Ce Que L'Enfer est Pétanque?

Hi Blog! Today is Saturday, February 7, 2015 - Yay, Saturday! Our campground is hosting a Petanque Tournament this morning.  I don't know about you, but we have never heard of Petanque before. A quick search of the Internet revealed - Pétanque (pronounced - pe-tank) is a form of boules where the goal is to throw hollow metal balls as close as possible to a small wooden ball called a pig or jack, while standing inside a starting circle with both feet on the ground. After reading this, we still had no idea how to play. We decided to go over to the Petanque Court and see what we could see.

When we arrived, the tournament schedule had already been posted.  Wow - 48 players were signed up.  There was a total of 12 teams. This is serious stuff.

The court is made up of fine gravel and sand that had been rolled and smoothed to make a level surface.

Here is a little red pig surrounded by three boules. Each boule has it's own serial number. Players decorate their balls in their own individual style.  Our personal favorite - the smiley face!

Time to get the show on road.  The tournament master rallied the troops and went over the ground rules for scoring during the tournament.

However, before any ball is thrown, we much have the group photo.

There are six courts and play is serious and focused. Balls are flying everywhere. You have to look closely to see the little red pig. Each player in the team is trying to throw their two balls as close to the pig as possible. To score, your balls have to be - and STAY - closest to the pig. Your team gets one point for each of your team's balls that is closer than your opponent team's closest ball.

As each team takes turns rolling their balls toward the pig, the captains of each team stand at the far end making sure their are no faults (like hitting the side rail). It also gives the captains a bird's eye view of where each ball lands.  The captains throw last, giving them the best chance to get their balls closest to the pig.

Here is a copy of the score sheet. We ended up leaving before the first round was final, so there are no scores posted yet. The tournament was scheduled to go on all morning and we hadn't eaten breakfast yet.

Now, you might think we figured this all out by ourselves, but you would be wrong. If it wasn't for Paul Keurig, the designated substitute, we would have been totally clueless as to what was going on. Paul was kind enough to explain the game, go over the common terms and give us the strategy for play.  Thanks Paul - we learned a lot.

We even learned how to pick up our balls without bending over. Thanks, Ed, for the demonstration with that little magnetic hardware store stick.

Petanque is very popular in France and most of the players today were French Canadian.  In fact, most of the teams spoke in French during the tournament. Since we will spend most of the summer in Canada, we might have a chance to play Petanque again. However, we're not quite ready to go out and buy balls just yet.