Hello everyone and welcome.
The Shooting Range, is Rick Armstrong’s secret practice place. What a great setting in the middle of a twenty acres!. What makes it different than any other private courts? Well, when you first drive onto the driveway you realized first of all that it is over hundred and eighty meters long and it is made of crushed granite, so by the look of it you know already that it was not just designed as a driveway but as 8 or 9 Petanque courts in mind. So this is his first type of terrain to have a perfect shooting practice to do carreaux. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. As Rick keeps on showing me you the rest of the property. You just can’t escape noticing that one side of the house there is a large area that doesn’t reflect the groomed property because it looks like someone forgot to take care of this part of the yard. There is tree roots, logs, tree branches, holes on the ground and beach sand. Well this is Rick’s design to recreated shooting and playing in sauvage style. Just too cool! But there is more to come. After going trough few gates you arrive to this great court of seventeen meters long by three and a half wide. And as you look closer you can see all type of markings on the ground with ropes and with red paint against the railings and frame. It is for practicing precision shooting with exact distance from six to ten meters. The more you look you realized that the whole place is professionally designed even the resting benches are made in mind to be able to have your boules take a break as well. So the benches are designed as such that next to your seat there is a special railing holding the balls at your arm’s length. This type of railing is also available at each end of the court, if you want to do rapid shooting and have several balls at arm’s reach. Again just too cool. I felt pretty confident that it will be difficult to win a game on that court because the whole place was like a battle ground and Rick knew avery inch of it. I held my ground and lost 13 to 10. After the game I got to experience all those markings and did a round of competition precision shooting set up.
The perfect petanque driveway!
The perfect resting bench.
Score keeping board with double clothespin idea for no confusion in remembering each round.
It was a great experience because I actually did get the chance to watch precision shooting in Millau but never had the change to do the exact targets set up. His dedication to the game doesn’t stop at the shooting style, the rules, the terrain etc.. He also had to find the perfect size, weight and component for boules. So he does have hundred of them. Oh and I almost forgot, he is also an official referee.
Rick Armstrong is a retired colonel from the United States Army, served in military intelligence from 1969 to 1995. He served in Vietnam,Germany,Korea and the first Persian Gulf War as well as three tours at Fort Hood, Texas and two tours at the Department of the Army Headquarters, Pentagon, Washington DC. He received the Additional Skill Identifier, Historian. He published eight books and monographs on Red Army operations and Soviet military affairs and over a hundred military history articles and reviews in scholastic, commercial and professional journals. His other interests have been martial arts,wargaming and petanque. He discovered petanque while camping in France in the early 1970′s, studied French rules for the game,and played in backyards with anyone showed an interest. In the 1990′s he joined the National Capital Club de Petanque and got to play with experience players from all over the world.
He is now a club member of HOT for few years and his expertise and knowledge of all aspect of the game does help us to reach a higher level. And one more thing his house is full of winning trophies.
A+ Love Arsene
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