Filling Your Head

As I sat with my friend Dave Faver on Christmas Day, who was in the hospital over the holidays, we were talking about pool at one point.  Dave is a great pool player in the DFW-area (and other states, too) and he has a vast knowledge of the game that most people don't realize he has.

I was sharing with him that I was distracted when I had sparred over the weekend, and was missing easy shots at times.  You see, because I'm not competing as much anymore and as often, my mental toughness is actually really weak.  I don't bare down or focus as much as I used to, and I get easily distracted with thoughts.

He shared with me, "Yep, if you don't fill your head with of the right things, then the wrong things will wind up there for sure."

And he's SO right!

I have a tourney in Oklahoma this weekend and I know if I can fill my head with focusing on following through, staying down and focusing on the object last, then the surroundings and atmosphere and negative thoughts will have a tougher time to get into my head.

Great advice/reminder for me for this tournament!

Dart Championships on TV

I was intrigued over the weekend when I saw that there was this "thing" called the Dart World Championships playing on TV. 

Maybe it was the bad cold I was trying to get over blurring my thoughts to watch something I have no interest in, lol.  However, I really was genuinely interested in seeing the production and how it compared to pool.

Of course. 

I swear everything I read or see I can relate to pool somehow, lol.

And as I watched it, flipping back and forth from it to the Fifth Element (a fav movie of mine), let me just say I'm highly jealous for our sport.

Here, this photo kinda already proves why I was disappointed and jealous:

Can you see the depth of the crowd!  It was a HUGE venue and it was PACKED!  The amount of fans standing behind the two dart players was astounding.  Fans were cheering and yelling and it was quite the spectacle.  Even when pool was on TV we didn't have crowds as big as that.  The crowd was even larger than what I've seen at poker tournaments on TV.

It was a three-hour program and it had one of those famous announcers that extenuates the words, like for boxers.  And in this corner, the World Champion Briiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeennnnnnnn Casperrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

I have to admit I didn't see any payouts I didn't watch it all that long, but what I recognized was is darts is a highly followed sport that I probably had no idea about, but happened to see it on TV this day.

Even when I came to work this week, our secretary mentioned it to me and she was surprised how much the fans were into it and also had no idea there was a Championship or that it is something popular enough to be televised.

I bet people think the same thing about pool.  They see pool on TV and they think that we make great shots and that they wish they could play like us.  They are even surprised that there's a tournament that we're playing for money on TV.

This was held in London and doing research for this blog post, Wikipedia shows this is a mostly a sport with European players.  And there are qualifiers and brackets, etc etc.

I had heard that people play in dart tournaments, but hadn't thought past that to think they would have a World Championship like we do.  And didn't think it'd even be on TV.  Of course there's other sports like this that we don't think of but yet we see all the time in the pool room that are more popular than we realize:  Shuffleboard, darts and foosball are the ones that come to mind.

I'm sure the competitive dart players were very excited that this Championship was on TV, just like we get proud when pool is on TV.   I presume darts has the same struggles as we do trying to get  mainstream in a world that doesn't see pool as a mainstream sport yet.

I was pretty happy to see the darts on TV.  They are very similar in our wants of a low hanging fruit sport that should be more nationalized.  Hope for pool!

Goals! 2018.

I have a written a ton of times about GOALS (okay, maybe that's a little bit of an exaggeration).

But because it's the first of the year, let's continue this important tradition. 

First, I don't believe in resolutions but I do believe in GOALs and feel they are very important to our improvement.  Bottom line is there are good goals and not so good goals.  Don't set yourself up for failure; set you set up for success!

One year I had a goal to get "Most Improved Player" on a tour in the late 90s. Boy, I learned my lesson the hard way!!  I had no control over that - someone else decided that "title" (and no, I did not win it, even though I came close).

That was a very unrealistic goal because I had no control over that.

I was so naïve.  lol.

Goals are important because they give you that something extra to strive for, to look forward to, to plan for, etc.

I like simpler goals now.  Like in matches:

• Have fun
• Stay down
• Smooth stroke
• Enjoy the game we love to play

These goals below seem realistic and attainable, but sometimes they are not:

• Get in the money every tournament
• Last til Sunday
• Win all my matches in league
• Get in the top 25% of a tourney

These goals are setting you up for failure.  Sorry!  They are affected by A LOT of outside factors that you have no control over.  One time I placed 9th and didn't get in the money because the field wasn't large enough.  One time I ran into the top two players and didn't make it to Sunday.  Another time someone slopped in the 9ball and cost me a 5-0 at league.

So, as you can see, goals are only as good as you set them.

Let's compare: "Watch more videos this year."  It's better to put a time factor on it.  How about, "Watch 2 videos a month."

Here is a list for you, that I would follow if I was still competing regularly:

• Practice for 2 hours every week
• Talk (or email) with my mentor every quarter
• Watch one youtube video about pool (lesson or great match) once a month
• Spar with a higher-ranked player at least once every two months
• Play in a weekly tournament once a month

If you have any free time (who does thee days?  lol), then check out this blog post from last year that has several links to goals and their importance (with great examples).

Good luck!