Sorry to hear you had a tough outing. After such a day I put the boules away for a while, and when I go out for my next practice I do it all alone so I don't have to re-tell the story to all my clubmates until I've had a chance to throw some good ones. I've recently played really poorly in two tournaments... it just didn't work on either day. And once I lose a game or two that I think I should've won, the situation spirals worse and worse. In our area we have some players who seem to be motivated by being down, they relish the comeback battle and actually play better under that added pressure. I haven't figured out how to feed off that same spirit or how to impart that kind of "battler" mentality to my teammates in a way that improves our performance.

I often do a warm-up exercise of “shooting” at 1 or 2 metres. I am almost perfectly accurate! I am still very accurate at 3-4 metres. As I gradually increase the distance, my percentage goes down… small mistakes in alignment, arc, and force are amplified. For your issue of always pulling to one side, maybe try these very short shots and see how you do. Where does the problem start to show up? If you find it easy to hit at a short distance, you can learn how that throw feels, and slowly slowly try to capture that feeling in longer shots.

You make reference to Claude Raluy’s book on pétanque. Not easily accessible here in NZ unfortunately. A listing of recommended books and web sites for training plans, drills, marking sheets for training, exercises both physical and mental, etc would be a really useful addition to this community.

Obut Match+ 74 700

Hello everyone, I'm John from New Zealand. I've been playing about 7 years, and I just turned 60 making me eligible for Senior competitions. I've had some success in club and regional tournaments, but would like to up my game to be competitive at the national level. I'm also president of the Auckland Petanque Association... not because I'm such a great player or great leader, but because nobody else wanted the job! So, I'm also interested in the promotion, governance and organisation of the game.