Petanque Coaching. Where to put your first boule?

All the practice tips have been to help you get your boule exactly where you want it. Many players want to get as close to the jack as possible but is "The closer the better?"

Let us look at a couple of situations that may provide food for thought and start the process where you think about where you place your boule. We all start this funny old game by trying to point close to the jack and if we are really good we get congratulated every time we get really, really close. Consistent placing of your boule close to the jack will certainly bring many benefits and many trophies, but it will also get many dead ends and many jacks flying into the bushes. Good for people who sell jacks? maybe. Why dead ends? Well if your boule is resting on the jack and the opposition shoot and miss they may shoot and miss again. You fool yourself you are in a great position as they have wasted two boule. The next shot hits the boule and the jack fly’s dead. You are back to square one and the advantage has gone. By placing the boule touching the jack, teams shooting have a better chance of killing the end even though they have missed once, twice or even three times? Not bad odds hitting one out of four boule and not getting punished in the points stakes! The point I am trying to make is that sometimes it takes away the choice the opposition have. This leads to a single-minded approach and this can be dangerous for your team. Always try to give the opposition a choice. If it goes wrong for them they may think the tactic was wrong even though the execution was incorrect. Divide and conquer. We will explain later