“Just about every one of us has enjoyed a game of darts in a pub at some point,” wrote U.K. reporter Daniel Harris in the New Statesman. “We know how easy it is to play, but how impossible it is to play well,” he added. Harris’ column on darts, digested in the Jan. 13th issue of The Week, went on to say: “Darts is about far more than chucking a pointy thing at a flat thing; it tells a story of humanity.”
He described the way to play the game successfully: Players must “perform a fine motor skill predicated on a steady hand and an empty mind.” Bystanders watch as a thrower misses his chosen target by just a millimeter and “displays every expression of tension, fear and devastation,” Harris advised. “There are those who love darts and those who haven’t yet discovered the game,” he added.
The Brit was obviously talking about steel tip darts, but the same exact motor skill and emotional aspects of the game determine who wins and loses at its soft tip sister sport in the coin-op world. But, is it a sport? Harris answers the question with two words: “Who cares?”
To read the whole New Statesman article, click here.
