A new toy at the Bocce ball courts

When we played Bocce Friday a week ago, we had the opportunity to use a new device that they have for the bocce ball courts -- a laser measure. 

The game of bocce has each team try to get their balls as close as possible to the palina. Determining which ball is closest is used in determining which team throws their ball next, and which team scores. Sometimes it is easy to determine which ball is closest just by looking, but sometimes it is not. We have had tape measures that are mounted on top of a cylinder that fits over the palina -- we pull out the tape measure and check the distance to "ball 1" and then "ball 2" to see which is closer (ball 1 would belong to one team, and ball 2 to the other team). 

In this case, the two balls in question were more than 2' away from the palina, and using the tape measure they appeared to be equi-distance. But recently, the courts had received laser measuring devices, and this was the first time either of the two teams that were playing had the opportunity to try it out... The balls that were being measured had been thrown from our end of the court -- generally the team members at the other end of the court do the evaluation, and generally only two people (one from each team) do the evaluation. In this case, because there was interest in the new device, the bench emptied, even a guy from our end of the court went along with a fellow from the next door lane who had used the laser measuring device previously -- I didn't go, so I got the pictures...

A great confab on the bocce ball court as everyone watched one fellow use the new laser measuring device...

"Blue has the closest ball!" (not our team, but you can see the celebration as it was determined!)

Our matches are really just for fun (and maybe bragging rights), so before having the laser measuring device, we would have just said that it was a tie and gone on to the next "end" without changing the score. In this case, the laser measuring device determined that the balls were within 0.02' of each other (about 1/3"). And... it is always fun to have a new tool to play with!