Still talking about scooting in Petanque

Scooting Shooting

We looked at scoot shooting in the last session. Line is everything for a successful scooter and it works well on a flat featureless piste. Not so good on a deep gravel pitch. Let us look at other reasons it may not be as successful as some players think. Comments have been heard “that it looks terrible when you miss”, others say “it looks terrible!”

The truth is, the hit rate may cause players some discomfort when it is deployed against them, but actually it is not the most successful method of shooting. It may work well on featureless pistes and one of the main reasons for this is a flat hard surface can be difficult to point on. Thus, the hit rate does not need to be high to win points and games. The low entry of a boule into a head means it is generally going to hit something. Boule thrown towards a jack on a flat piste will, maybe, roll slightly to one side. With four or five boule in the head the chances of taking out a boule is high. If the boule is the oppositions then by removing a boule with the first shot may mean a successful 2^nd shot leaves you holding three boule on the ground. In any random end if you bent down in the circle you could see a wall of boule across the piste. When a scooter is about, any one of those boule is going to move when hit. In fact scooters hit a lot of boule just for this fact alone giving them a false sense of a hit rate well beyond their rang. Petanque is a mental game and it could be a full level of confidence and a frustrated opposition may be enough to swing the balance in a game.