If you thought the darts crowd was wild at the highest-level tournaments, you should see it at the kind anyone can enter. The Dutch Open boasts more entries than any other darts competition, and its dollar-and-a-dream appeal brings out the sport’s lovably rowdy side like few others. That doesn’t mean the best of the best aren’t there—particularly in the women’s field. For Victory Journal, Amos Barshad shadows two tungsten-tossing luminaries . . . and dispenses a little style critique in the process.
In the darts rooms the players who are still alive scream, but their shirts—loud ones tucked into sensible slacks—scream louder. They offer stage names like “The Devil,” “The Godfather,” “El Capitan,” “Zneminem,” “The Curse,” “The Architect,” “The Beer Seller,” “The Blizzard,” “The Mystery.” They feature dart boards engulfed in flames or wrecked by lightning bolts or smashed through by monstrous snails. They say semi-explicable things like “I’m sexy and I throw it” and “Fifty shades of art” and, in arguably unearned appropriation of an infamous football chant, “No one likes us we don’t care.” Darts is lovably full of swagger. As for how full of self-awareness it is, I’m honestly not so sure.
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