by Jon Wills

Created on: May 25, 2009   Last Updated: May 27, 2009

I guess we all know that wiht any sport - that is always presuming we can term bocce as a sport, which I would suggest we can - the best way to get better at it is to do practice drills. And then do them again...and again and again. The only way we can get better at any sport, including bocce, is to do the practice drills often and frequently.

I suggest what we need to do in the practice drills is work out the skills needed to be a winner at bocce and then practice them all the time until we get really good. That way you wioll become a winner. And nobody wants to lose, do they?

So, before deciding on the drills, I suggest working out what you think are the skills needed to be a good bocce player. You need to be able to throw the bocce ball the right distance going forward. So stand with a bocce ball in your hand and throw it forward at a spot. Keep doing this until you land it on the spot you are aiming at almost every time.

You also do not want to throw the bocce ball wildly in the wrong direction. So practice throwing it straight at a spot right in front. That will make sure that when you bung it it does not end up drifting embarrassingly to one side, if you get my drift.

Bocce is easy. It is played mainly by old men in the village square in Italy and has been exported around the world to many other coutriesn so that it is I suppose gradually being termed a world sport nowaways. You either have the ability to play it well or you do not. But to make sure you play it really well, follow these simply drill practices and in no time you may, you never know, turn into a world beater. It is just a shame you will never be able to win Olympic gold as it is not a Olmpyic sport. Still, here is to dreaming that one day! Good luck. And enjoy your games of bocce to the max!

One more point I would like to make, although it is not strictly to do with practice drills, is that bocce is a similar sort of sport to petanque. So, if you have been a regular petanque player and you then decide to take up the sport of bocce - which is a frequent occurence - then you probably have already got many of the vital skills needed for bocce and will not need to practice quite so hard as a raw beginner. But I would not imagine for even one second that the manager of the local bocce team would want you to read that - he would expect you to train just as hard as anyone else on the team!

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