Exclusive
Darts1 interview
with Michael Rosenauer

What do think of playing league?

It depends. To play against somebody always helps with experience, might it be good or bad. An example for a bad experience: when I still played for the DIG Neu-Isenburg we had to drive for a First Division match against DC Hawks Vilsbiburg around 630 km. And then I did play only two singles, best of five, and two doubles best of five, for me that doesn't make sense. Almost 1300 km and only four games. You could do something better in this time. If it's only 20 to 40 km, ok, that's no problem. But with such a distance it's nonsense. But as part of the practice league matches are good, you always have to play different opponents, different surroundings, different situations, noise, disagreeable opponents that's of course better practice than playing against a computer without emotions. The computer will not kick you or throw his darts five times on the ground.

Softdarts has some advantages, you play more than on single, there are more softdarts clubs, so you haven't to drive as far. You safe time and money. This travelling far distances is more expensive. But in softdarts you've to pay the automats. I would prefer softdarts as training to playing league. There you play four singles and two doubles, which are a little bit more for one evening. In steeldarts I play my single and if I am a good player one double, six matches are better than two. I've no problems changing between softdarts and steeldarts, my darts are very similar. Recently I had two identical sets, one with a power point tip, and one with a soft tip with a difference of at most half a gram.

Then your steeldarts are very light as well?

Yes, those Unicorn darts I play now are including the shafts around 20 grams. I couldn't stay with power point any longer; power point and Unicorn are two different firms. I told unicorn I would like something very similar to the power point tips. As I got the first set I was looking forward to teasing everybody: "Would you please help me, I can't unscrew the tip"? "One second please, you'll need the metal spanner".

I use this kind of tip because of my grip, the power point tips have a lot of grooves, and no other dart has got them. Unicorn told me they would design every dart for me, so I did send them a sketch. It wasn't important whether it was moveable or not. In the beginning those power point tips were moveable but they started to wobble when you play a lot. I've my finger there, I notice it. I cut of part of my softdart tips, put it in and fixed the power point tips on it. That helped!! What I really did like at those tips was that they are very thin. That looked like more room on the board, because not the whole tip disappeared in the board.

Last year in Malta I did see a Welsh player with six or seven cm tips, the tips were longer than the barrels. He told me: "When I throw a treble twenty you almost don't notice there is a dart in the board". You see I am not the only one who has such a strange idea. I think those moveable points have no success with the pros because they start to wobble. Either it wobbles in the board or you can feel it. It doesn't happen all the time, so you can't get used to it. I am very strict with every detail. Unicorn constructed those darts and told me, "we've never done anything similar strange before". I answered: "That's good for you, that's again something exclusive". My darts are the same you can buy. I am very satisfied with the result.

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