A wine-friendly sport in Sonoma: Like bocce ball and bowling, the game of petanque is peaceful, social, and fun - Northern California Travel Guide - Brief Article

Sunset, May, 2002 by Chiori Santiago

* On a spring morning in Sonoma, near downtown's Depot Park, a crowd stares intently at a couple of patches of dirt. A competitor steps up, eyes the terrain, contemplates the weight of the shiny metal ball resting solidly in one palm. The ball arcs from his hand, falls, wiggles on the uneven ground, then comes to rest inches from its target--a wooden ball called the jack that his opponent will try to hit next.

Petanque is a little like billiards; it's as quietly intense as golf and as genteel as croquet. Anxious observers probably work up more of a sweat than the players as they wait for a favorite's ball to knock a foe's off the court with a resounding "puh-tank!"

But that's not how the game got its name. Petanque may be the only sport inspired by a disability--that of Jules LeNoir, who in 1910 was a dedicated player of boules, a French game much like bocce ball. An accident put him in a wheelchair; he couldn't step forward to launch the boule. So friends invented a new version, confining a player's feet to a small circle scratched in the dirt court. The ball was launched with pieds tanques, or "feet together."

Europeans brought the sport to Sonoma, where the Valley of the Moon Petanque Club, with more than 150 members, is the country's largest. On May 19, members hold a tournament, complete with picnics and many bottles of red wine, at the Depot Park courts--which conveniently are right off Sonoma's main plaza, behind the barracks. Tournaments continue throughout the summer in Northern California.

For more information, call (707) 258-3450 or go to www.sonomapetanque.com.