Jack Main looks back on first months on PDC Pro Tour: 'I took it all in my stride… my first throw was a 180'

When a player takes to the oche for the first time as a PDC professional, it is to be expected that their nerves will be on edge.

A first foray into the competitive shark tank that is the Pro Tour inevitably comes with heaps of pressure to prove oneself against the biggest names in darts.

But Jack Main, whose impressive performances at February’s Q-School earned him a tour card at the first time of asking, has found the transition to the professional game remarkably straightforward.

Read also

New Tour Card holder Jack Main on 'wild journey' to joining PDC Tour: "I didn't really pick up a dart until I was 17"

“I took it all in my stride”, Jack exclusively told Darts News.

“I felt comfortable from that first game [at Super Series 1].

“My first throw was a 180.

“[Opponent] Max Hopp ended up having a 105 average to my 99, I think. It was an eye-opener and a welcome to the pro tour, but that’s what you expect when you’re there.

“There are no easy games… in the majority of them, you’re going to be hit in the face with a hundred average or a high-nineties average.

“They [other pros] try to stamp their authority on you, because you’re a new lad or new woman on the block.”

‘A rollercoaster’

Jack – professionally nicknamed ‘The Main Man’ - was a footballer at Norwich City’s academy before a knee injury forced his early retirement from the sport.

Yet despite the disappointment of being unable to fulfil his ambitions on the pitch, the 24-year-old practiced darts while recovering from the injury – creating himself a new avenue for sporting success.

“Once the injury happened, and I was told that I wouldn’t play football again, I just didn’t want to believe it”, Jack said.

“My brother used to play the odd game of darts. We used to have a dartboard in the house.

“Being bored… because the knee was all locked up, that was when I started throwing because there was nothing else for me to do.

“If I want to do something, then I’ll put my mind to it and I won’t stop until I’m at the peak of what I can do. I was the same when I was playing football.”

Since then, Jack describes his darting journey as being a “bit of an up-and-down rollercoaster”, with time away from work during the pandemic giving him the opportunity to further improve his game.

He said: “I think the lockdown did me a world of good… a couple of months where I was at home and I was practicing a lot.

“Also, I actually moved house during the pandemic, so moving out and isolating and having my own darts room where I spend the majority of my hours practicing, has done me the world of good as well.

“I started playing really well in events. I thought I would take it up another level and focus on certain aspects of my own game to boost myself up.

“I prepared myself for Q-School and I said to a few people that I was going to get my [tour] card this year – and luckily enough, it happened.”

‘In darts, it’s punch-for-punch’

Reigning World Champion Gerwyn Price successfully made the sporting switch from playing rugby union to darts, but Jack feels there aren’t many attributes from his football career that can be brought to the oche.

“In football, if you’re having a bad day, you’ve got ten lads behind you, or you can get subbed off”, he said.

“Whereas in darts, if you’re having a bad day, it’s a lonely place. You’re on your own… you don’t have that backup and that time to get back out into the swing of things.

“In darts, it’s punch-for-punch.

“There are aspects of the game where it has helped to come from a football background, but also sometimes you can’t have that flair that you have in a football match in a darts match, because if you lose control in a darts match, that’s it… you’re done.”

Unlike ‘The Iceman’, Jack steers clear of exuberant mid-match celebrations.

“Until I’ve won the game, the job’s not done. I’d say I’m different to Gerwyn in the fact that where he celebrates, I don’t.

“I leave the celebrating for the end of the game, when it has been called ‘game shot’, and that’s that.''

This interview is conducted by Toby Foster