Sport And Exercise Psychology: A Critical Introduction

our admiration of other people’s expertise beguiles us into believing that we too could
have untapped potential which could be turned to our advantage.

Box 6.1 Profile of an expert sport performer: Phil ‘The Power” Taylor

Despite its stereotypical association with beer-swilling, overweight men in smoke-filled
pubs (and they are just the performers!), darts is a popular and skilful game. Briefly, the
objective of this game, which probably dates back to the Middle Ages, is to throw a set of
projectiles (darts) at a board which is placed about eight feet away (approximately 237
cm). Different locations on the board yield different points for the dart thrower. Success
in darts requires a high degree of concentration, eye-hand co-ordination and fine motor
control skills. These characteristics are epitomised in abundance in the career of Phil
“The Power” Taylor—who is widely regarded as the most skilful darts player of all time.
Indeed, in January 2002, after he had won his eighth consecutive world championship
title and his tenth overall, he was described by darts commentator Sid Waddell as “the
greatest arrows-thrower who ever drew breath” (cited in Hughes, 2002, p. S7). So, who is
this star player and what makes him so successful?
Born in Stoke, Phil Taylor was working as a tool machinist when his wife gave him a
birthday present of a set of darts in 1986. He began to play once a week and showed
enough skill at this sport to represent his county after a mere two years. One day, Eric
Bristow (the most famous darts player of his

generation) saw him practising and offered to advise him about the game. This advice
soon paid off because in 1990, Taylor entered the world darts championship—and won it
Ironically, he defeated his mentor, Bristow, in the final! This victory was the first of a
series of stunning performances that saw him demolish opponent after opponent with
remarkable displays of accurate dart-throwing under intense competitive pressure. Famed
for his dedication to physical and mental fitness (e.g., he practises for six hours a day;
Hughes 2002), and for his ruthless ability to finish matches when he gets the chance, he
deliberately refuses to socialise with his fellow competitors in case he loses his
competitive edge. For him, darts is a battle and “familiarity breeds contempt ...I can see
when people play me that they’re worried. I can see the fear in their eyes and I know I’ve
got them then... As soon as he (the opponent) shows weakness, I’m in there, humiliating
him, If s like boxing, You need to get your guy on the ropes” (cited in Kervin, 2001, p.
S6).

In capturing this idea, an adage from the study of attentional skills comes to mind: there
is no such thing as a difficult task only an unpractised task. Second, the study of expert
athletic performance is appealing because it enables researchers to examine how skills are
acquired and perfected over time in real-life rather than artificial contexts. This
distinction is an important point because traditional laboratory studies of human skill-
learning were confined mainly to short-term activities (e.g., maze-learning) that had little
relevance to everyday life. By contrast, contemporary researchers are striving to
understand how people become proficient at complex everyday skills such as swimming
or playing tennis. Of course, there is also a methodological explanation for the upsurge of
research interest in athletic expertise. Specifically, the scientific study of skill-learning in

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