The reality gap

Somewhere between a darter's actual ability and his/her belief of that ability is a murky mental space I have come to call the ability gap. I sketched a line to illustrate this during a frustrated moment when I threw and filmed a series of scoring darts that felt great but were revealed on playback to be below par by my current standards:

I was surprised when my darts felt good and flowing but on playback my head was bobbing, my throwing arm sagged on the pullback and my follow through was erratic and looked different each time. I believed that my ability was my 'A' game but in reality it was my 'C' or 'D' game.' What had occurred was that my growing self confidence had created a reality gap and if I had not been filming I would have carried on throwing with a false sense of security.

The difficulty for darters is that success relies on an unshakeable belief in your ability to hit the target: if doubt exists then the chances of success diminish. The further difficulty is that to improve in skill level is to somehow realistically appraise one's weaknesses (in order to work on them) without letting them become fuel for doubt. Raymond Van Barneveld for example is a darter whose reality gap is wide, since his insanely high level of skill is often at odds with his negatively skewed view of what he is capable of. A total beginner at darts who has a natural flair for hand-eye coordination has a small reality gap and consistently amazes themself about all the cool check outs and trebles they keep hitting! If you read Wayne Mardle's autobiographical account of a year on the PDC circuit his reality gap is non-existent because he actively tries not to think about his level of ability and puts it down to forces beyond his control. This last example demonstrates an extreme reaction to the mental problems darters develop as their skills improve: you often lose your natural instinct to point and throw and become too aware of the small details and what you think you are doing wrong. Poor old Wayne never came to terms with the mechanics of learning and did not develop his talent as far as it could have gone because he could not, or would not realistically appraise his own ability level. Think for a moment how much more of a contender Wayne could have been if he had studied his own mechanics and worked out the reason why his darts drifted to the 5 bed in moments of tension?

So what does all this over-intellectualising  mean for me then? Well the simple answer is that I was doing quite well improving my scoring darts, I struggled to develop my doubles and then spent a couple of weeks practising inefficiently, not filming my throw as often, but throwing with loads of confidence. My latest batch of FTS statistics are: 76,90,72,86,86,90,86,100,90,90,95,90,81,81,100. for a mean FTS percentage of 87.5% which is an improvement on 80% last time I measured. I am happy with my overall progress when it comes to throwing straight and I have proven this in a recent game in the pub where I surprised myself with a 24 dart leg straight out the blocks and took three legs in a row when my opponent became very frustrated at chasing every leg. The mental strength I possessed on this occasion was that I was expecting to throw fairly straight in the scoring phase, and I was also expecting to spend quite a while on doubles. My opponent on this occasion was too frustrated to notice (and therefore exploit) how long I was taking to check out in the second and third legs, and for my part I was calm about missing lots of darts at doubles because I was expecting to. The challenge for me now is to analyse and improve my darts around the board so I can expect to hit other areas besides the 20 bed. I must however remain aware of the potential for the reality gap to widen and I want any confidence I feel to be a product of actual ability and not false confidence which can grow when you do not have enough feedback and do not come to terms with your actual mechanics and results.