Having grown up through the changes to many sports, it feels like the answer is that we only reached a modern approach in the 90's for a lot of sports.<p>People will cry "steroids", but it's way deeper than that. Weight wasn't <i>everywhere</i> like it is today. It's hard to imagine baseball or basketball without significant weight training, but it seems obvious now. Golfers and runners incorporate weight training which would have been unheard of just 30 years ago (except for that one weird guy).<p>Nutrition has made huge strides. Also the concept of "off season" has largely disappeared. Football players no longer show up to preseason to get into shape -- that's what they were working on the whole summer.<p>Then there is data analytics. Teens have power monitors and more in cycling. Baseball players have pitch tracking and way more.<p>Then the internet. I played soccer in college in the late 80's. We had to learn everything from coaches or a "friend who saw this one thing from a guy they played with when travelling...". Now you can get a technique broken down -- in detail.<p>Coaching has abundant online resources and training on how to run a practice and drill skills, so 8 year olds are receiving a better training.<p>I'm watching this revolution take place right now in wrestling. The sport is getting bigger and better in the US. The difference between how a practice is run in soccer vs wrestling is stark. Wrestling is much more of getting thrown in the deep in and "find what works for you" where soccer is much more programmatic training of skills, raising the fundamental levels across the board. I suspect a lot of sports are going through this at the moment, catching up to the more formalized training methods of the biggest sports.<p>Along these lines, this year we saw a European player dominate the NBA playoffs. Lots of talk about how strong the fundamentals of his game are and whether US players brought up with the solo style (showing off?) system are actually falling behind a bit in technique.
> When Smith aims for the triple 20 — the highest-value subsection of the board, but smaller than half a square inch — he hits it less than half the time.<p>Note that perfection does not necessitate hitting a high percentage of triple 20s, since one is also constrained by having to throw a total of 501 points.<p>One way to achieve true perfection is to hit triple 20 + triple 19 + double 50 with every 3 darts, giving all 9 darters.
The amount of money one can earn as a professional sports player has also multiplied so the incentive to practice has multiplied also.<p>If I spent my youth playing darts 8 hours a day I would be considered rather foolish, nowadays not so much.
Reminds me of Star Trek episode where they have darts and Bashir stops holding back:<p><a href="https://youtu.be/j3RgXKU0RsQ?si=Gbh7JPVoEgrmQJqR" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://youtu.be/j3RgXKU0RsQ?si=Gbh7JPVoEgrmQJqR</a><p>And it is this very topic:<p><a href="https://youtu.be/orDyHlnaFys?si=4BxQBBLaf7suk4XA" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://youtu.be/orDyHlnaFys?si=4BxQBBLaf7suk4XA</a><p>Star Trek explored many subjects!<p>Too bad I can’t find the darts scene that closed out the episode