World Championship Day 11
If Only...
The incorrigible "Crafty Cockney" gave Peter Wright absolutely no chance last night , he told an amused Dave that they were betting on how few legs "Snakebite" would win as opposed to whether he could win, how we laughed...Ultimately Eric was right but Wright didn`t lie down and dye as was predicted. He even won enough legs to take a set off "The Power" and had numerous chances to hit a winning double. "Snakebite" will reflect on a brilliant tournament and we doff Taylor`s hat to him, however, over the next few days the two biggest words in professional sport will keep coming back to him, if only!
Armchair Practice
One of our dedicated clients of the Darts Performance Centre made a guilt ridden entry in his training diary today- he has been watching more darts that he has been practising them. We have demonstrated though that players of all standards can learn from watching the best. The FA promotes the idea of young players watching the stars of the Premier League play as an effective learning tool.The same can be said of darts, what about these areas of excellence that we have noticed over the past week or so that those "grassroots" players can try to emulate:
The mental toughness of The Power
The finishing (backed up by hours of practice) of The Wizard
The focus of Jyhan Artut
The power scoring of Gary Anderson
The tenacity of Adrian Lewis
The resilience of Mensur Suljovic
The dedication to his pre-throw routine of Dennis Smith
The 3 Dart Average is Most Interesting
We are naughty aren`t we? Regular followers of the blog will know we don`t really like the 3 dart average, its relevance to a darts match is blown way out of propotion and we argue its only job is as a guide to how many darts a player needs to win a leg.Last night Taylor finished with a three dart average of 98.07. His other statistics are also interesting. His 9 dart average is excellent, over 110 (usual service resumed), however, his doubles were an impressive 38%. Impressive? Well it is for the majority of the players competing in the event but it is below what Taylor can achieve and this is why he appears to be not quite back to his best.
The reason that the 98.07 average is of interest is that it means, statistically, Taylor needs a shade over 15 darts to complete a leg, in other words a player hitting a 12 darter against Taylor`s throw or a 15 darter with his own throw has, for the first time in years, got a chance of winning a leg from "The Power".