History
Bocce is the Italian version of lawn bowling. The earliest known form of the sport was a game played in the Italian Alps, early in the Christian Era, in which stones were tossed at a target stone--not necessarily to hit it, but to land as close as possible to it.
This was a major amusement for Roman soldiers, who spread it through the empire. Balls were eventually substituted for the stones and they were usually rolled rather than tossed.
Three distinct types of lawn bowling developed through the centuries. In France, the game was known as boules, from the Classical Latin word for ball. A different form of the sport became known in England as "lawn bowls". Bocce, also known as boccia, derived its name from the Vulgar Latin word for ball, bottia.
Italian immigrants brought bocce to the United States. Its original centers of popularity were New York City and San Francisco because of their large Italian-American populations. But, as newer generations grew away from the sport, bocce declined and seemed in danger of extinction in this country.
The sport experienced a small resurgence, mainly in California, during the 1970s and it's grown rapidly during the last decade. The center of the sport in the U. S. is Martinez, California, which has more than a thousand competitors in league play and many more who simply play for fun.
The U. S. Bocce Federation says there are about 1 million players in the United States. Outside of California, major centers of popularity include Chicago, Las Vegas, Memphis, New Orleans, Phoenix, St. Louis, and, of course, Rome, New York.
How It's Played
While lawn bowling is usually a semi-rural sport, requiring a pretty good-sized expanse of grass, bocce became an urban sport in Italy, often played on city streets. As a result, the bocce court has a rather hard surface of packed dirt or gravel and it's rectangular, 60 to 80 feet long and 12 feet wide. A wooden barrier, 4 1/2 inches high, surrounds the court.
An interesting feature of bocce is that shots can be played off the side boards and the backstop. Thus, the sport has some similarities to table shuffleboard and to billiards.
There can be one, two, or four players per side. Each side has four balls. A player, chosen by lot, rolls a small ball, the pallina, which becomes the target. That player then rolls a second ball, attempting to get as close to the pallina as possible.
Progress of play is rather unusual. The second side bowls until one of its balls is closer to the pallina than the ball rolled by the first player, or until all four balls have been used. The first side then takes its turn.
When both sides have bowled all of their balls, the side with the ball closest to the pallina gets a point. A point is also awarded for any other ball from that side that is closer to the pallina than any ball rolled by the opponents. Thus, only one side can score in a frame, and that side can get up to 4 points. The first side to score 16 points wins.
Among better players, bocce is a strategical game. Since the pallina can be moved by a shot, a player can often score by knocking the pallina closer to balls previously rolled by his or her side. On the other hand, a player whose side already has balls in scoring position may choose to place a ball in front of the pallina to keep it from being moved.
In standard bocce, the balls must be rolled. There's a variant known as raffa, in which the ball can be lofted toward the targets. A third variation, volo, is played like raffa except that the players use balls made of brass, rather than synthetic plastic.
