May 20, 2007

Petanque on grass?

I have never been an advocate of playing petanque on grass, and it ticks me off when vendors advertise it as such - as on this picture. Tall grass to boot. You can't see the target ball, and the boules bounce around like on a mattress. It's misleading for new players.

But... there's grass and grass. This weekend the French Alliance here in Greensboro held a picnic and we ended up playing for a couple of hours on a patch of hard, grassy soil in City Lake Park in Jamestown.
It worked well and several people new to the game thoroughly enjoyed it.
Bottom line: if it looks bad as a lawn, it's good for pétanque!
Well, putting greens would work too, but you'll probably be banned for life from the golf club if you tried.




2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't live anywhere near ideal clay petanque ground, so I'm about to give in and start playing on short grass. :/

Anonymous said...

I live in a community that vote against a pétanque terrain, but I found a well level open area with Bahia grass that is good enough for me -at least until the community change their mind and vote in favor of a new pétanque terrain- (I hope).