About the Heart of Texas Petanque Club.

History of The Heart of Texas Pétanque Club

The Heart of Texas Pétanque Club was started on May 21, 2008 by the current President Arsene Dupin and a group of friends.  After moving to Austin from his native France, Arsene realized pétanque was missing from his life. He looked around town, and to his surprise he found a few players at the French Legation Museum. But he wanted to bring the joy of the game as well as the competitive  aspect to more people.   So he started to teach a lot around town and  found some enthusiastic pétanque players and before long they decided to make it official by forming a club. Now games are establish regularly at the French Legation, Pease Park, Paggi Square and the Mueller Browning Hangar. H.O.T by now also has held several International  Tournaments.  Members of the club are from all walks of life.  You are welcome to play with us at anytime.

What is Pétanque?

Pétanque (pronounced pay-TAHNK) is a form of boules where the goal is, while standing with the feet together in a small circle, to throw metal balls as close as possible to a small wooden ball called a cochonnet (jack). The game is normally played on hard dirt or gravel, but can also be played on any kind of surfaces. Similar games are bocce and bowls.

The current form of the game originated in 1907 in La Ciotat  in Provence , in southern France. The French name pétanque comes from petanca in the Provencal dialect of the Occitan language, deriving from the expression pès tancats [ˈpɛs taŋˈkats], meaning “feet together”or more exactly “feet anchored”.

The casual form of the game of pétanque is played by about 17 million people in France, mostly during their summer vacations. It is also widely played in neighboring Countries.  There are about 600,000 players licensed with the International Federation of Petanque and Provencal game in 88 countries,  375,000 in France with the Fédération Française de Pétanque et Jeu Provençal (FFPJP)