PDC World Championships Night 1 and 2

Posted: 17.12.11 in Tournament Analysis Blog category

We look at the darting life that goes on outside the Worlds and Roland's 8 hours of practice.

It’s the third day already! The first two nights have been packed full of incident and talking points. This is our first blog other than our preview as life carries on in the darting world whether there is a World Championship on or not.

For example we were at Rileys in Oxford yesterday. We met up with current PDC player Andy Brown who was interested in having his throw analysed. To the naked eye Andy has a very efficient action but as ever the video analysis kit picked up on a couple of tweaks for him to work on. We also met Jon Mulley, he played on the PDC Youth tour last year and is keen to have a bash at Q School in January. Both players left with different aspects of their game to work on and it was yet another valuable learning curve for us as coaches too.

Practice...

Back at the Worlds we learnt Roland Scolten has been practising for the tournament by hurling darts for 8 hours a day! I was discussing this yesterday with my colleague Andrew and we both came up with the same question we would like to ask Roland, why?

The evidence we are piecing together using the feedback from the members of our site is “less is more”. Common sense tells you that it is virtually impossible to concentrate for eight hours. If you are not concentrating but simply going through the motions you are not learning and essentially wasting your time.

We are currently running an experiment with some of our members looking at a slightly different way of practising darts. One of the “rules” is for short sharp sessions to encourage maximum focus levels. We will report back in the New Year on how the trials went.

Interviews

A few blogs ago I mentioned how much data I accumulated about players simply from their interviews. In recent weeks the interviews have been the busiest talking points. Bizarrely the interviews that didn’t take place were talked about even more!

Last night though it was the pundits that let us into the world of the PDC. Rodders, and I don’t blame him at all for this, stood up for the PDC decision to hold the Players Championships a few days before the Worlds. Bristow “let slip” that a few of the top players did not agree and “The Crafty Cockney” was suggesting this may be why the top players performed so poorly. He suggested Taylor did not really want to be in Doncaster and his focus was on the World Championships just around the corner.

The crucial part of this interaction was when Rodders (who may have thought he was off camera) cast an embarrassed and a” I have been caught red handed” grin at Bristow immediately after defending the decision to play the two tournaments so close together. Bristow told us all what we already knew, that the scheduling was a mistake! Hopefully there will be another jiggle of the PDC calendar to resolve this next year.

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