3 May 20268 min read
Ask any serious amateur darts player what is holding them back and they will usually say the same thing: doubles.
Not their scoring. Not their stance. Not their setup. Doubles. The visit where they had the leg won and then watched three darts bounce off the wire, or slide into the single, or somehow end up in the 4-bed.
The frustrating part is that most players are already trying to fix it. They throw at doubles in practice. They warm up on D20. They remind themselves to slow down, calm down, trust it. And then the same thing happens next match.
Here is why that approach does not work — and what does.
Most players diagnose their doubles problem as a confidence issue. They tell themselves they "tighten up" on the double, that they think too much, that if they could just relax it would be fine.
Sometimes this is true. But it is usually a symptom, not the cause. The actual cause is almost always one of two things: a mechanical inconsistency that only reveals itself under pressure, or a strategic error in which doubles you are attempting.
These are both fixable. But you fix them differently, and neither fix involves telling yourself to relax.
The treble 20 is a forgiving target by darts standards. It sits in a fat, central position. If you drift slightly left, you are still in the 20. If your dart drops slightly, you might still clip the treble. The board absorbs imprecision well enough that many players develop mechanical flaws they never notice because the scoring phase covers for them.
Doubles do not work this way. The double ring is narrow and sits on the outer edge of the board. Any lateral movement in your throw — caused by the elbow drifting outward or inward during the forward stroke — sends the dart into the adjacent single or off the board entirely. Any vertical inconsistency from a dropped elbow or cut follow-through lands you below the double wire.
The mechanical errors were there all along. The doubles just expose them.
Biomechanics research identifies the most common causes of inconsistent doubling as: elbow misalignment during the forward stroke, incomplete follow-through that introduces variability at the point of release, and "snatching" — a sudden, jerky wrist contraction that fires the dart unpredictably. None of these feel dramatic. They are micro-errors that are invisible during scoring but decisive on the double.
This is why warming up on D20 does not fix the problem. You are practising hitting a double when you are relaxed and fresh. The mechanical errors only surface when the stakes rise and muscle tension increases — which is exactly when your throw needs to be most mechanically sound.
Not all doubles are equal. This sounds obvious, but most players do not apply it in practice.
D20 is not the easiest double on the board. It is the highest-value double, which is different. If you miss D20 and your dart lands in the single 20, you are now on a difficult odd number with no straightforward route to a comfortable double. Miss slightly to the left and you are in D5 territory — a different double entirely.
The doubles that elite coaches call "strategic" are the ones that break down cleanly when you miss the double bed and hit the single instead. D16 is the classic example. Miss D16 and hit S16? You are on 16, leaving D8. Miss D8, hit S8? You are on 8, leaving D4. The board ladders down to D1 via a clean chain of halving. You never get stranded on an awkward number.
D20 does not ladder this way. S20 leaves 20, putting you back on D10 — a different target, a different line, a mental reset forced mid-checkout.
For most players, this strategic shift alone — choosing D16 as the primary double rather than D20 in many situations — produces an immediate improvement in checkout percentage. Not because their throw got better, but because the target got more forgiving.
The same logic applies to setup. Knowing which doubles you want to land on, and hitting the numbers that put you there, is a learnable skill that pays back in legs won.
The standard doubles practice routine — standing at the oche, throwing three darts at D20, noting how many you hit — has a fundamental flaw. It is comfortable.
You are not behind in a match. Nobody is watching. There is no consequence for missing. You throw in a relaxed state, your mechanics are clean, and your hit rate looks good. Then you get into a match, the pressure arrives, and the same dart that found D20 in practice drifts wide into the wire.
Effective doubles practice has to create stakes. The most widely used drill for this reason is Bob's 27 — a game developed by former world champion Bob Anderson. You start with 27 points and work through every double in order, from D1 to D20 and then the bullseye. Every time you hit the double, you add its value to your score. Every time you miss all three darts, you subtract the double's value.
The genius of this format is what happens as the numbers increase. Missing all three at D20 costs you 40 points. If your score is low, that miss can end the game immediately. The psychological pressure is real in a way that casual doubles practice never is. Your mechanics get tested when they actually need to be tested — when something is at stake.
A score above 400 is solid for a club player. Above 600 is very good. Professional-level players regularly score above 1,200. The number gives you an objective benchmark that tracks over time, unlike the vague sense of whether your doubles "felt good" in practice.
A related issue with most doubles practice is that it rewards hitting the double at all, rather than hitting it consistently. In a match, you often have only one visit at a double before the opponent is back on a finish of their own. Consistency — being able to hit the double with the first dart more often than not — is worth far more than a high ceiling hit rate across multiple attempts.
Drills that require you to hit a specific double three times before moving on (rather than just once) produce a different kind of consistency. They force you to hold the same mechanical line across consecutive throws rather than getting lucky once and moving on. Three consecutive hits at D8 tells you something meaningful about your throw. One hit tells you very little.
This repetition-based format also surfaces another useful piece of information: which doubles cause you to reset your stance or adjust your position. If you find yourself shifting your foot angle to feel comfortable on D13 or D11 — the left-side doubles — that is useful diagnostic information. You may be fighting your natural throw line on those segments, which means minor positional adjustments on the oche could produce big improvements on the specific doubles you have been missing.
There is genuine research on how professional darts players respond to pressure, and the findings are counterintuitive. A study analysing over 710,000 match situations from professional PDC competition found no statistically significant drop in doubles performance when both players were simultaneously on a finish — the most pressurised scenario in darts. Elite players hit their doubles at essentially the same rate under maximum pressure as under zero pressure.
This tells you two things. First, the mental resilience required to perform under pressure is achievable — these players are not supernatural. Second, it is a trained capability, not an innate one. The players who show no pressure response have developed it through years of practising under simulated pressure conditions, not by telling themselves to calm down.
For amateur players, the implication is that drilling doubles in a comfortable environment and hoping the skill transfers to a pressure situation is not a reliable strategy. You have to train the pressure response directly — and games like Bob's 27 exist precisely because they do that.
The doubles problem is almost always a combination of three things: a mechanical flaw that scoring conceals, a strategic error in target selection, and practice that is not pressure-testing the skill it needs to test.
Fix the mechanics first — specifically the follow-through and the elbow arc. If your follow-through is cutting short, nothing else matters.
Then fix the strategy. Build a mental map of which doubles you want to land on and which ones to avoid. D16, D8, D4 and D18 are your friends. Learn the checkouts that leave you on them.
Then fix the practice. Bob's 27 three times a week will tell you more about your doubles game than a month of casual warm-up on D20. The score does not lie.
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