Millau is a small city or big town, situated a couple of hours north of Montpellier, and a couple of hours south of Clermont-Ferrand, on the recently completed A11 Autoroute, in the Department of the Aveyron. It is famous for its production of luxury leather goods — gloves, purses jackets — and for being in the heart of the Roquefort cheese empire. It sits in a kind of natural bowl surrounded by cliffs and mountains, is a favorite of balloonists and hang gliders.
The Mondial now attracts more than 15,000 boulistes and spectators, completely overwhelming the hospitality infrastructure. Every hotel room, bed and breakfast, and camping spot for miles around is usually booked months in advance. This year, all hotel rooms in the town were booked by January (I was able to find an established bed and breakfast — called chambre d'hôtes in French — just a few kilometers outside town). During the Mondial, the restaurants work at a frantic pace at meal times. There are no restaurants of any note in the area, so eating is more functional than aesthetic.
The tournament is played in the Parc de la Victoire, a pleasant oasis in the very heart of town. An army of volunteers prepares the grounds (cleaning them at 6 a.m. each morning). Stands for spectators are erected around sixteen courts, and this arena is called the Carré d'Honneur. By the third or fourth game of any competition, the Carré is reserved for great matches and for the more famous players. Beginning with the round of 16 — the 1/8 de finales — all games are played in the Carré, which can hold several thousand fans.
The volunteers also line another 400 courts in the Park. For the first couple games of the open Singles, Doubles, and Triples, this number is quite insufficient, so play spills over to lined courts in the parking lot of a nearby bowling and shopping complex. Players face at least four different kinds of surfaces, a situation that heavily favors technically skilled pointers. In the Carré, and courts immediately surround the Carré, surfaces are little more than uneven cement topped by a thin layer of small pebbles. At the entrance to the Park, the courts are a mixture of rock, cement, and hard-packed sand — a "good" point may well be one resting a full meter from the bouchon! To the east, surfaces are hard-packed clay and rocks, with lots of hills and valleys. In the center and to the west, they tend to be soft sand and rocks, giving no chance to rollers. Most of the Park slopes north to south, even in the Carré. The slope means that one points entirely differently from one frame to the next. Rollers, and players who are not able to hit a specific spot with precision and the right spin on the ball have no chance of winning more than a game or two. In any case, by the third game at the latest, only players who play competitive Pétanque regularly are likely to remain.
