Tucson Petanque Club

The Tucson Petanque Club is located in Tucson, Arizona, USA. We play weekly on Sundays from mid-October through the end of April. For practical reasons, we do not play on Thanksgiving day, Christmas eve, Christmas day, or Easter Sunday.

TPC has adopted special guidelines for play during the Covid-19 pandemic. Read them HERE.
Note that our guidelines require players to wear masks while participating.

If you are a new or visiting player, please read our guidelines for new or visiting players and contact us before joining us.

About us

The Tucson Petanque Club is an informal group of Tucson residents and winter visitors. We use this web site to co-ordinate times and places to play, but we don’t keep a membership list. To join us, simply come out and play with us. If you plan to play with us regularly, we strongly recommend that you sign up for email notifications.

• Visitors and beginners are absolutely welcome.
• If you have boules, bring ’em. If you don’t, we have guest boules.
• If you’d just like to watch, that’s fine.
• Our playing area in Brandi Fenton Memorial Park is near the playground and the splashpad. If you bring the kids (and someone to watch them) they’ll have things to do while you are petanque-ing.
• Bring a bottle of water. It’s easy to get dehydrated in Tucson.
• We recommend that you leave your purse and other valuables in the car. We’ve never had any problems, but you’ll be able to concentrate better on the game if you’re not worrying about something else.

Legal stuff

• Note that consumption of wine or liquor is prohibited in Tucson city parks.
• For safety reasons, glass containers are prohibited in Tucson city parks.
• Note that TPC does not exist as a legal entity and our meetings are not covered by event liability insurance. Participate at your own risk.

Our normal schedule

We organize teams and start promptly at the announced time. Please arrive a few minutes early— late arrivals make team-formation more difficult. We typically play for two hours, but players stay as long as they like and are free to leave at any time. Our rain cancellation policy is HERE.

Where to park

Each page with information about our playing areas includes directions to parking.

Want to play at some other day, time, location?

Contact us (see below).

How to contact us

To contact us send us a message in a comment. Your message will be forwarded to us and we will be able to reply to you via email.
Email and telephone contact information (as well as information about our rain cancellation policy) can be found HERE.
 

How to sign up for email notifications

If you plan to play with us regularly, we strongly recommend that you sign up for email notifications. If you sign up for email notifications, any new post on this page will be forwarded to you in an email message. New posts are forwarded to our Facebook page, but Facebook is not reliable in what it shows and what it hides.
To sign up for email notifications, log out of WordPress (if you are logged in). Go to the top of this page, then scroll down until you see Follow Blog via Email in the right column. Follow the directions.

How to unsubscribe or change your email address

There will be an “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of each of our email messages, so you can easily unsubscribe whenever you wish. If you change your email address, you can unsubscribe from the old address and subscribe again with your new email address. Winter visitors can subscribe when they arrive in Tucson, and unsubscribe when they leave.

Never played before?

If you would like to learn, or just try, petanque, come down and join us. We’ll give you a free ten-minute lesson and you’ll be good to go. You don’t need to be “athletic” to play petanque. If you can swing an arm, you can play and enjoy petanque. Petanque is a game of skill, not strength, and men and women can compete on an equal footing. We have kid-size guest boules for those smaller hands.

Buying a set of boules

In petanque, each player typically owns his/her own set of three boules (metal balls).   We provide guest boules, but if after playing for a while you want to buy your own set, you can order petanque boules from the Petanque America online store. For tips on buying boules, visit the Buying Boules page.

For more information about petanque

• Petanque Portal USA has links to the most useful petanque web sites.
• All about Petanque covers general facts about the game and its traditions.

Information about the rules

• The Rules of Petanque is a good source for the official rules.
• Information about our local (club) rules is HERE.

About other petanque groups in Arizona

For more information on any of these groups, visit the Arizona page in the American Petanque Directory.

• Jerome/Verde Valley/Sedona area has a well-established club (Ghouls with Boules) that plays regularly in Jerome.
• Bisbee has a group that plays regularly on Saturday afternoons.
• In Tucson and Yuma winter visitors in RV parks play during the winter months.
• Phoenix Petanque plays regularly in Roadrunner park.

For BOCCE in Tucson, see our Bocce in Tucson page.

A good two-minute video introduction to petanque