Article III

Practicing for Mental Health

GHS I enjoyed reading your practice article, so what I get from what you are saying is that it's not "that" I practice but "how" I practice. Shooting rounds of 301 by myself and shooting against people at my local pub as often as possible is not enough? Or not the right way? I feel I practice, practice and practice and get nowhere. And what can I do about my wobbly knees? I get nervous and then my stroke is off, I don't release properly. What can I do when everyone is watching? I tried drinking more, I tried drinking less. Sometimes my head is on just right, but I can't get it there every time. Please help?

3 single ones

Dear 3 single ones,

Thank you for reading and understanding what I’ve written. That seems to be a rarity these days: someone who can read and understand. Since you seem to be someone who is a credit to my sport I’ll be happy to help with your wobbly knees thing, uh, that’s in the literary sense that is.

I’ll break practice down to its simplest elements, since I’m that kind of guy. There two elements as I see it. One is to get your ability to deliver a dart where you want it, when you want, all the time and I refer to that as practice for your mechanical game. The second element is practice for your mental health and that is where your adroit question takes us.

There are a lot of advice givers across the world and they all stress the "mental game." Some advice givers have proven ability to win because they have won a lot, but they mostly have ghost writers do their writing since, I suspect, they haven't spent any time thinking about why they play so well so - they don’t know why they play so well, or can’t express it. Then we have those who write their own book but have never won anything, other than some local league championship, and have spent way too much time dreaming up reasons why someone might play very well. Last are those who have never played the game but think they know what to tell those of us who do. The exposure I’ve had to advice written by those folks has convinced me much of their advice is not only addle headed, it can do damage to a real dart enthusiast and they make way too much of the "mental game." For your own mental dart health don’t listen to them. Here’s the straight stuff.

Good mental dart health is belief in yourself, that’s all. Simply, it’s confidence. Getting and keeping confidence comes from board time against competition. There is a world of difference between practice in solitude, playing league, playing with buddies at the local tavern and gaining confidence beyond the mechanics of dart delivery and it comes from "putting your practice to use," a quote from my book. Everything about your mental dart health begins with having control over the path your dart takes to the board, so solitary mechanical practice is prerequisite to good mental dart health. That’s why I talk about that first. Now you appear to be ready for the next step so here we go.

Never, ever, play for nothing!!! That’s the whole thing about mental dart health practice. All right, now go out and become the beast of the board and I’ll go back to tending our potted plants.

Ah, wait a minute. I might have skipped a couple of things. Think I’ll explain a little more in depth, but not so much it’ll hurt anyone.

It could be that when I say "never play for nothing" some people may interpret that to mean you must play for money: gamble!! Oh, no dear friend, that’s not what I mean at all. In fact, in most smash face darts contests I’ve been in or witnessed the money very soon looses it’s fiduciary meaning and simply becomes a way to keep score of who won the most. In the end it’s an ego thing. The cash is soon gone but the memory lingers on, and on. You really play for something more important than money: ego, one up man ship (person ship?), alpha dominance. Add that attitude to the cash in your pocket and then you have it: the whole enchilada.

What we are talking here though is practice. Practice for your mental health. Practice for the confidence to know you will make a good shot when it’s required and play a high level game when something is on the line. Practice that will minimize ‘wobbly knees syndrome.’

Before I go on I want to distinguish between wobbly knees syndrome and intensity. Intensity is a feeling, a zone, a buzz, sort of a distancing from reality that comes with being ready to compete with all you can bring. It’s "the lights are on but no body’s home" thing, and is a glorious experience to have. Dam, I really miss that! It’s the thing that goes first in dart players and I don’t know how to get it back. Sometimes it’s there and sometimes it’s not. In the same night!! Frustrating. Do not confuse this with wobbly knees syndrome. I can tell you how to fix the syndrome, but you’ll have to go somewhere else to learn how to get the "fire" back.

OK, back to practice for mental health. How does one never play for nothing? What ever it is that you do, but certainly in darts, loosing must carry a penalty you find aversive. Loosing must stick in your craw if you are going to surpass just being able to play darts well. You must have something of value on the line when ever you play. That’s the way you condition yourself for those times when wobbly knees tend to show up. That’s the way you distinguish, in your play, between intensity and the syndrome.

If you’re of the right attitude not letting the other person win could be enough incentive but most of the time a person doesn’t have that "killer" instinct when it comes to friends. Adding something to loose is a good thing, and it doesn’t have to be something tangible. I’ll use an example: you go to the local public house (that’s a pub) but when you leave your house you only take enough money to buy three drinks. When you arrive you get into a game and insist on the stakes being a drink. If you loose, assuming you’ll have one drink before getting into a game, you’ll be going home early. What incentive would you have for winning that first game? A bunch is my guess! It doesn’t matter what is on the line in order to practice for mental dart health, just how much you value what ever it is.

An example:

I was sitting at the bar after loosing league play to a team which had a guy named Bob Dillon on it (no, not that Bob Dillon). Bob was an agitator, and instigator, a wise --- and he knew how to get under a person’s skin. That was part of his talent. He’d agitate until some fool wouldn’t be able to take it anymore and play him for some $. Bob, of course, always won. He liked "little green trophies." He did it so often that no one in the little dart pond Bob ruled would play him. Well, be it from bravado, ill placed confidence, or succumbing to his agitation, I challenged him. "I won’t play you tonight but I’ll play you a guarantee for $25 in three weeks. I need the time to save up the money." Brave words indeed at that time of my darts life. There were enough people who disliked Bob that they put up the money. Five from one, two from another until the whole amount was raised. We played and I can tell you I had intensity galore, and wobbly knees. It took him over five hours to get the stake. Later, after I calmed down enough to understand my urge to jump off the Ben Franklin was over reaction, I realized he didn’t outplay me, he out gambled me. You see, in these affairs you usually start out playing for small amounts per game but as the night wears on the amounts would grow until a short streak of being off would break a player. Bob knew how to work that and I fell for it. That’s what happened to me but, boy, how I learned from that. And Bob never agreed to play me again, which demonstrated how much more savvy a gambler he was than I.

Another example:

I spoke with a guy named Norm Finely recently. He has been out of competition darts for a few years now and when asked why he quit he gave this answer. "I lost eight games in a row for a dollar a game to ??? (the name escapes me). Since he had no business even in a game with me that was bad enough, but he made me autograph every dollar. That’s when I quit." Now, Norm is a great guy with a lot of tales to tell, and I certainly don’t doubt the authenticity of this story, but in any case it demonstrates the point I’m making.

Final example:

I was playing against a guy named Joe Baltadonis. Joe was my partner in those early years on the "circuit" and he was the US Open champion, among a bunch of other wins, including one against a world champion in England. I dropped a line about how I had to carry him everytime we played (not true) and I only got five cents of help when he thought he was worth a dollar. We got to playing for a nickel a game (chuckle)! We were swapping nickels for a while, when I used my last two to buy a beer, they were 10 cents at the time (no smart aleck remarks about - 10 cents?). I won the next game and Joe only had a dime and a quarter on the bar. He pushed the dime over and said, "OK, I owe you one, shot the cork." My response? "No way, I want my nickel. You lost, give me my nickel." His face flushed a little and his jaw tightened but he turned to the bar tender with, "give me a couple of nickels for this dime so I can pay this poug." I’ve never known exactly what a poug is, just that it’s something not good. Any way, the bartender responded with a glint in his eye: "you want change for that quarter too?" To which Joe answered: "No, I won’t need it, he isn’t going to win any more."

That’s how you can - "never play for nothing!!!!" That’s how you learn confidence in yourself! That’s how you can handle "wobbly knees syndrome!!!"