Thursday (10th Oct) Tournament

 So back to a no restriction traditional Open tournament. A very good field was on display. Some players, that had not played here for a while turned up, making it particulalry competitive. 

I had one of those nights (again!) I had a very manageable group and believed it should be a group I could qualify from.  Maybe I was tired, or just not focussing, but I got off to a bad start, losing to Academy player, Spencer Phillips. He is a bogey player of mine anyway ,but neither of us turned up. My thinking was it was the first game and I'll warm up. 

Second game, I played Ben May. I was unaware of him prior to tonight, but I marked his first game and he look decent (around mid 50s average Id say). In fact that was the kind of game we had. We both hit around that range, but I had some nerves creep in when finishing. (As I've said previously, I desperately need to get rid of darts nerves)  I can only describe the nerves as when you are performing a task completely fine and then someone watches you. You then lose all ability. Crazy. I've had it since I was a child, so it needs a lot to fix it, but I'm always hopeful. 

Third game, was against Ashton Brown. Part of the Brown clan of incredibly good players.(Brother John and father Steve, both recent PDC Tour players). Ashton is not far behind. I didn't expect too much, and in parts I played well, but Ashton was too strong. Hitting big scores, it was too much for me and he won 2-0. I'm now in trouble and really need to win my last 2 games, as any hope of results going my way drifted away. 

So I needed a win against Andrew Long. We were playing around the same standard, but those nerves kept coming and I just tightened up more and more. I lost 2-0 and was out. I then followed that up with a 2-1 loss to Antwon Phillips. 

On reflection, I did play well in parts. My head wasn't totally there tonight.  Big fixes for the next week is mind control and double practise. I need to be disciplined. These are clearly weak areas for me, and if I have any aspirations of improving over the 60 average mark, then I need to focus, and not just play 501 against bot games!

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