The Grand Slam 2013
Whilst we have been mingling with grass roots dart players the Grand Slam has started!
The Grand Slam is about to enter its third day and I am just catching up with events. I was at the Hampshire County darts event at Mill Rythe in Hayling Island with our mobile darts shop at the weekend. The event is held twice a year (November and May) and from what I witnessed everyone had a great time. If you fancy a weekend away playing darts then get over to the Hampshire Darts site for more details.It was also interesting and beneficial to chat to "grass roots" players who value the social side of the game as much as they do trying to win a darts match and progress to the next round. Nevertheless deep down everyone prefers winning and I find out a great deal more about what makes dart players tick at events like this than say watching one of the slick PDC tournaments such as the Grand Slam!
After two very late finishes with the shop on Friday and Saturday it was nice to finish early on Sunday in order to catch up with the Grand Slam last night. I like the format even though it does produce some "dead rubbers" during the third round of games. This only adds to the interest and drama though! Due to my darts shop commitments I didn't write our usual pre-event blog but I did have concerns about how the BDO players would fare this year. I am a big fan of the BDO as well as the PDC but the two BDO form players are not representing their code (Bunting and Wilson) at the Grand Slam and I feared that the rest, for various reasons, may struggle. Wesley Harms hasn't played to his potential and cannot qualify after just two games. In group C Christian Kist looked back to his best beating Richie George (Richie can't qualify now either) but Kist now has to beat Jackpot in the third wave of games to qualify.
Scott Waites is through though. He looked a little out of sorts when I saw his play from my front row spot at the Winmau Masters a month or so ago but clearly he has picked up a notch since then. Finally Tony O'Shea is on the cusp of going through. There is no doubt he can beat Ricky Evans but for insurance O'Shea needs to go for a convincing victory. This group is one of those classic last game mathematical conundrums and once O'Shea's game is done we will know how many Merv needs to beat Barney by to go through.
Overall then a decent return for the BDO boys, most likely two will go through and Kist has a chance to join the BDO party in round 2 but Lewis is of course a formidable opponent!
It was interesting to hear Wayne Mardle chatting about the fact that Kevin Painter had been experimenting with his stems recently to see if a tweak could help change the angle his darts land in order to increase his chances of stacking his darts more efficiently. This is something we have been interested in for a while. It is very simple to try and really can help you improve your scoring.
We sold a number of our experiment packs at Mill Rythe at the weekend. I did say dart players do prefer winning despite what they sometimes say! I have written a guide on how to carry out the process and the pack, with all the kit you need is available in our shop or on Ebay. One player who carried out his own experiment wrote a blog about his experience here!