Today's Question

Why has the United States never produced a great darts player?

Comments

[Simon]

Because 10 pin bowling is the "sport" of choice for that demographic in the US?

[rach]

Because Americans simply don't have the blood alcohol content tolerance expected of great darts players.

[dearieme]

Because if you put the bar for "great" high enough, the USA has never produced a great anyone. No Shakespeare, Darwin, Smith, Hume, Gauss, Euler, Lavoisier, Mozart, Beethoven, Rembrandt....

[MikeF]

"Because if you put the bar for "great" high enough, the USA has never produced a great anyone. No Shakespeare, Darwin, Smith, Hume, Gauss, Euler, Lavoisier, Mozart, Beethoven, Rembrandt...."

It's true: the set of Great People born in the USA and the set of Great People born before the USA existed have little overlap...

[Colin Campbell]

No pub culture and the thought of having to throw a mini spear when you could go to the gun range would be considered a bit gay.

[Kris]

I blame violent video games and rap music...

[ben]

Not, I think, an interesting question -- why hasn't the UK produced a good candlepin-bowling question or Mexico a good tiddlywinker? These are games played for a lark, mostly. It's when it gets into big money that you have to ask why the US has never produced a good *snooker* player.

[dearieme]

MikeF - you mean that the founding of the USA stopped the creation of Great Men worldwide? Cool. But what about Clerk Maxwell and Einstein?

[tommyt]

Well - how many great darts players have theri actually been ? Taylor & Barneveld for sure and of course you can argue Bristow, Lowe and Wilson - though even at their pomp they would struggle against the much heavier scorers around these days. So you are asking the USA to produce someone capable of joining a very elite band.

Back in the golden era the states had a couple of solid pros in Jerry Umberger and Nicky Veraschcal (who made televisions first 10 dart finish an achievement right up there with the first televised 146 or hole in two) and the USA have won the darts world cup - more than once I think. Throw in current PDC world champ John Part who is canadian but played and plays much of his darts in the US and we can see that the USA has made a fair contribution to the darting world. Sure they have never had a world champion but only 4 non UK nationals have won either version of the title, the fact that the original version is run by the "British Darts Organisation" may give some clue as to where the power base lies.

There are other reasons of course; tradition, "American Darts", geography, lack of tv exposure, lack of pub culture etc but it good just be, and I see this borne out in other areas, that Americans just arent very good at hitting the targets they are actually aiming for.

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