Sometimes non-sporting friends ask me how come golfers ever don't hit it straight, since it's all they ever do, all the time. Similarly: 'How come bowlers ever don't bowl the ball where they want?' My answer, which I have noticed doesn't satisfy anyone, is that it is very difficult to hit a golf ball straight, because the tolerances are so tiny. The usual response to this explanation is: 'Obviously I'd worked that out for myself, I'm not an idiot. I want to know why? I mean, really.'
I haven't got a proper answer to this yet, but I got a glimpse of the start of one watching the BBC's programme on snow last week. Snowflakes are six-sided because the root molecule is a hexagon, and the arms spread out from the six points. This root molecule is always the same, and yet every snowflake is different. Thus, unbelievably tiny differences at a root level lead to impossibly complex variations.
Different actions at sport are more easily repeatable. Some are more repeatable (snooker, for instance). With hitting a golf ball, a tiny difference in input leads to a huge difference in outcome. I know this is the same explanation I started with, but I think the snowflake thing is the start of being able to metaphorise an explanation more cleanly.
Yo.
2 comments:
I get it with golf and cricket and suchlike, but do not get it with snooker and darts. Given that some people devote their lives to honing their talent at clearing the table or hitting the triple twenty, why are there not at least a few who can always do it, without fail?
Sometimes I infuriate snooker fans (some of whom you know) by asking them this, and at the end of the subsequent row, I usually pretend to understand. But I don't really.
I know it is unsatisfying, but it's snowflakes again. Nothing in nature repeats. Darts is easier than golf, because it's less precise, but it's not so easy that even the best darters can do it every time. The reason you can tell this is so is that they don't and they are trying. Other sportsmen who have been seduced by better sports would almost certainly be able to do it better, and if darts were ever well enough rewarded to entice the greatest sporting talents on earth, and they almost never missed, then maybe the rules would have to change. I do, I really do, know this is an unsatisfying answer to someone who hasn't spent a lot of time playing sport. Maybe I need to expand next into analogies with music, art and writing. I can see some appearing through the mist.
(Televised sport with fewest errors (ergo easiest): ten pin bowling.)
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