CarolinaPetanque Member Places Third at Amelia Island!

(from left:)  Khalid, Claudy, Jean-Pierre, Joseph

CarolinaPetanque's own Khalid Mesbah finished in a tie for third place overall at the 2012 Petanque America Open.  The annual event draws teams from all over the United States, Canada, Mexico, Africa, and Europe.  It is an open format tournament limited to the first 128 teams that register.

Khalid and his partner, Joseph Hassoune from New York, won all five of their qualifying matches on Saturday.  They then proceeded to win three straight on Sunday morning before finally losing in the semi-finals to former petanque world champion and world shooting champion Claudy Weibel from Belgium and his partner from the New York Petanque Club, Jean-Pierre Subrenat.

Weibel and Subrenat went on to defeat Marco Foyot, also a former world champion, from France and his partner Bernard Martin from Florida in the championship match.

The other third place team consisted of Roger Arpaia from Florida and Peter Mathis from California.  They lost to Foyot and Martin in their semi-final match.

Congratulations!