Tir

Tir. The shot. The throw that means business.

Pétanque has two verbs, and they are the whole game. Pointer is to place your boule near the cochonnet. Tirer is to throw your boule at the opponent’s boule and knock it out of the way. Pointing is conversation. Shooting is the argument.

The tir is thrown high and hard. It lands on the target boule or just in front of it and takes it out — ideally while your own boule stays put. That’s the dream: carreau, the perfect shot, where the thrown boule stops dead on the spot of the one it killed. When it happens, the whole terrain goes quiet, and then everybody talks at once.

Every team has a shooter. Usually the same person, every game. It’s a temperament, not a skill. Shooters like the big moment. They get bored pointing. Give a shooter a choice between a safe point and a risky shot, and he’ll shoot, and miss, and shoot again.

Americans hear “shoot” and think basketball. Wrong sport. The tir is closer to a linebacker’s tackle, or a chess sacrifice. You give up your boule to take theirs. Violence with a purpose.

Learn the tir last. Pointing wins more games than shooting ever will. But when the game is on the line and their boule is sitting on the cochonnet like it owns the place — that is when you learn what the tir is for.

That is all.