Tennis

You can argue over the term 'sport', but in terms of longevity, surely Phil Taylor surpasses all.

comment by Darren The King Fletcher (U10026)
posted 2 minutes ago
I know that's a joke, Don, but the mental strength needed at the very highest level in darts is huge.
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Ha, to be fair I think from a mental point of view there isn't a harder sport in the world - unlike in football, where most insults just become noise, the arenas tend to be small enough that the players can hear an individual giving them grief, and most similar sports that require such precision (snooker, golf etc) are played in silence, at least whilst the player is actually making their shot.

So I'm with you!

Can you really go down the pub and play sport?

comment by Unknown Poster (U15867)
posted 4 minutes ago
Can you really go down the pub and play sport?
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Yes, I saw two men playing "Snooker" in my local, things got so strenuous at one point that one of the competitors creased his trousers

Yep definitely, Don. Combine that with the pressure on every checkout and it's a hard task.

Supposedly the biggest difference between the very best and the rest in darts is mental strength and not accuracy.

The difference between Tennis and Darts is that nearly every shot in Tennis has to have the accuracy of a checkout and to add to that supreme fitness.

Not comparing them, Rob. They are incomparable.

comment by Darren The King Fletcher (U10026)
posted 2 minutes ago
Not comparing them, Rob. They are incomparable.
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it's a tricky one though, because if we do accept darts as a sport - and i'm not sure it is any less of one than archery say - then taylor is by quite a long way the greatest sportsman of all time.

ok, darts doesn't have the competition other sports do - ie there are not millions of people around the world who play darts, but there are millions of tennis players - but his dominance of that sport over a 15-20 year period is pretty much unique.

sure, federer is a much greater athlete, but then the bloke who won the last iron man event is a greater athlete than federer, but no one really cares about him.

Don, it's more about adding being a pure athlete to the skill of something like Darts. Interesting that the examples you gave (darts and Iron man) contain singular demands that when added together, for me equal what being great at tennis would need.

Yeah that's true, Don. I guess it just depends on how you quantify it, because different sports require different abilities and some would weight skill over athleticism depending on their preference.