Articate

If you are anything like me, you will probably have watched one or two sports on TV and thought ‘I could do that!’ I think darts certainly falls into this category because they are simply throwing some pointy objects at a dartboard. I mean how hard can it be?

Well if you think anyone can potentially become a professional darts player, you are very much mistaken. It is actually a lot harder than it looks.

I myself have been playing darts since I was around 8 or 9 years old (I am now 34) and I am still nowhere near good enough to play on the professional circuit. In fact I wouldn’t even be a top county player.

The truth is that you can get very good at darts by practicing for several hours a week. I know that my game has improved a lot over the years, and I am now a reasonable standard. By that I mean I can hit the occasional 180, and on a good day I might take out 501 in around 15 darts.

However in order to become a professional darts player, I believe you need a certain amount of natural ability as well. There are several examples of professional players who picked up a set of darts for the first time and knew pretty much straight away that they had a natural ability for the game. Indeed in some cases these same people went on to become professional darts players after just 3-5 years.

I know many other people who aspire to become professional darts players, and practice for several hours a week and play in their local darts league in order to try and fulfill their dream. However the truth is that they are never going to be quite good enough to become professionals because they do not have a great deal of natural ability.

Unfortunately practice can only get you so far, as myself and many of my friends have discovered over the years. As I say, I started playing darts from a very young age, so if it was that easy, then I should be a top player by now. However the simple fact is that I am a decent player, but that’s it. I am definitely not a top player, despite the fact that I’m pretty good at most other sports.

So if you ever find yourself watching darts on television and thinking you could easily become a darts player yourself, you may be in for a shock. The players you see on TV are the best in the world, and many of them will have been born with a certain amount of natural ability to begin with. So combined with hours and hours of practice, they have developed into really good players. Sadly most people can only dream of reaching such a standard, and in most cases no amount of practice is going to help them reach this standard.

The best thing you can do is buy your own dartboard, keep practicing all the time, and join your local darts team. If you’re lucky, you may become good enough to start playing county darts, and then if you’re really good, you can start playing in some of the professional tournaments. However if you are like most of us, you will find that darts will never be anything more than a thoroughly enjoyable pastime.