MDCQL #5

My worst Metro League outing yet.  Not only was it a loss, but a whopping one at 1-4.  Even worse, of the 19 legs we played I only won 7!  What happened?

Tonight's match was against a gentleman I'd never met before named Jeff.  He, like most darters, is a terrifically nice guy, swell into darts, and a fine shot.  And like me, he has a fledgling dart collection that he admires and is proud of.  Unlike me, however, he is primarily a soft tip player and plays a lot.

I am wondering if my performance tonight might not have been at least partially undermined by my own shitty attitude.  I did not want to play in the venue we settled on; it has its dartboards right next to the front door so every time the front door opened not only did you have commotion behind you but you also got blasted by a swale of cold air.  Even worse, the floor under the oche is not even, and the whole area slants slightly.  So going into it I knew I didn't want to play there and I may have done a poor job of eradicating those feelings from my mind pre-match.  After all, when the environment is shitty, it is shitty for everyone, not just me.

Nonetheless, my philosophy is that I have no excuse for playing poorly, only reasons.  Thus I need to deep dive a little on this match and figure out exactly what the hell I was doing wrong!

The two highlights I will claim from this match were these:  first, going into the last set I was down 0-4.  And instead of succumbing to defeat I rallied and won the last set 3-0.  So at least I was able to mentally maintain a modicum of resilience.  Second, I played well enough that I maintained a 51+ three dart average, and I still have the highest average in the qualifier league.

The lowlights are too numerous to enumerate.  But a few of them included not hitting any 180's or even any 140's, accumulating a meager 2,068 in tonnage, and of course, dropping so many legs. 

On to the analysis:

I lost the first four sets, 2-3, 1-3, 1-3, 0-3, respectively.  I seemed to get worse as the sets went on.  At a high level, of the twelve losses, three were due to an inability to finish, four were due to an inability to score bigly, and in five I was playing decently, but was overpowered by my opponent.  And another interesting tidbit: in nine of the twelve losses I never got a single dart at the double ring.

The first set had a very different loss profile than the other three sets I lost.  In the first set, all three of my losses were an inability to finish. Between the three losses I threw 15 darts at the double ring without a successful hit, and across all five legs I threw 19 darts at the double ring with only 2 hits. That's an average of 9.5 darts per double hit.

After that first set though, finishing was not my downfall.  In sets 2, 3, and 4, my losses were all due to either anemia or simply being overpowered.  In fact, my two strongest games during the match were both losses with an average if 64.3.

Across all 19 legs we played I threw a dart at the double ring 45 times, hitting successfully 7 of them, for an average of 6.4 darts per double hit.

I think I have belabored the analysis enough.  I know what I need to do: practice :)

I took a single set with me this time (as I have done for all but one Metro matches thus far) and they were the samely configured Voks Nobu's I have been favoring.  Next time tho, definitely switching it up.  Thinking about breaking out the Steve Cootes again.