Michigan Petanque Sport Central News Agency 2005-10-18There was quite a battle that took place up last night in Rochester.
Team Z mounted a significant challenge to
Team LaChance in the fifteenth
Best of Nine series.
Joe Zajac leapt forward to a commanding three-games-to-zero versus LaChance, on the basis of tight pointing and precision shooting.
Joe Zajac even managed an unprecedented fanny against LaChance. Of course, after a fleeting moment of victory, he called daily for more bouts with his opponent. After a second day of tough play, the match stood at four games to one in favor of Team Z. With excellent pointing, often with all three balls within 20cm of the bouchon, and with surgical movements of the bouchon, moving it into the cluster of his own boules, we at
MPSCNA thought Zajac would win for sure.
But it was not to be. After a third night of play, LaChance closed the gap (
four games to four). We have admit, one of those games was lost by Team Z due to bad luck: Hitting the bouchon with his final boule ricocheting the bouchon into LaChance's cluster of boules twice, costing Zajac five points.
Night four, the closing of the Best of Nine, was a hard fought match. The score seesawed up the points' ladder:
2-0, 2-2, 2-3, 5-3 during which
Zajac made a rare and perfect point - his three boules and the bouchon ending up in a solid cluster. Still, somehow, Team LaChance pulled to the fore and put Zajac down with a final score of 11-13.
The suspense in the games is drawing new stadium goers into the Petanque audience. Of course,
the fifteenth victory in favor of Team LaChance added to his impressive string of unbroken wins in this Best of Nine series.
Team Z is chipping steadily away at LaChance's advantage. It will not be long until we will be reporting a victory for Team Z. In the meantime, there will be cliff-hanging matches on the pistes of Rochester.
