“Generally they’ve got a head start” – Wayne Mardle explains why being good at football, golf, cricket or tennis can help you at darts

Wayne Mardle believes players who arrive in darts with a background in another sport can already have an important advantage before they start working seriously on their throw.

The former World Championship semi-finalist points to football, golf, cricket and tennis as examples, arguing that players from those sports often already understand timing and rhythm. But before Mardle gets to that stage when assessing a throw, his first focus is much more basic.

Speaking to Winmau Darts, Mardle explained that stance, posture and arm movement are all connected rather than separate parts of the action. “Straight away, yes, I’m looking for the basics,” Mardle explained. “And the basics are the stance that leads to the posture, that leads literally to the arm raising and the follow-through. That is about it.”

The finer details come next. Mardle looks at everything from the position of the back leg to the height of the shoulder, with one seemingly minor issue capable of affecting several other parts of the throw. “But there are other little nuances in there,” he continued. “Like, how far back is the trailing leg? Is it to the side? Is it behind them? Is the shoulder low? Which means the elbow’s low, which means the chin will be low, which means the head will be low.”

Rather than identifying one obvious flaw and attempting to fix it in isolation, Mardle believes players need to understand how different parts of the action feed into each other. “One thing leads on to another. It’s seldom just a fix,” he said. “There’s always something that can fix something else.”

Once those foundations are in place, Mardle’s attention moves away from the mechanics of the throw towards two things he considers just as important: routine and rhythm. “So basically, I’m looking for just the basics to be decent,” he explained. “And then after that, it’s routine and rhythm.”

That is where Mardle believes experience in another sport can become particularly useful. Football, golf, cricket and tennis may all demand very different movements, but each requires an understanding of timing, coordination and repeating an action consistently. In Mardle’s view, players who have already developed those qualities elsewhere often bring something valuable with them when they turn to darts.

“Most sportsmen, so if someone comes in and says, ‘I’m good at football, I’m good at golf, I’m good at cricket, tennis,’ generally they’ve got a head start because they understand the timing and rhythm element of sport,” Mardle said. “And you need that in darts.”

For Mardle, that rhythm is what eventually turns a technically solid action into a repeatable throw. Foot position, posture and arm movement can all be corrected, but the player still has to bring those elements together naturally and reproduce the same action visit after visit.

His approach therefore puts far less emphasis on searching for one dramatic technical fix. The fundamentals have to be in the right place first, but once they are, timing and rhythm become just as important in turning a good action into one a player can trust under pressure.