THE elephantine girths and prodigious alcohol consumption of top players is often cited as evidence that darts is — how shall we put this? — different to other sports. In truth, however, these are mere details. The real divide is not evidenced by the number of cirrhotic livers or layers of subcutaneous fat but by a difference in philosophy. Darts is a throwback to the days when sport was gloriously unscientific.

A few minutes in the players’ lounge at the Lakeside Country Club in Frimley Green, Surrey, venue for the World Championships, is sufficient to demonstrate the difference. The players’ lounge is something that, in various guises, is common to all sporting venues — an area adjacent to the auditorium where the players can prepare for matches.

In any other sport, athletes would use the area to perform a precise and well-honed set of routines designed to generate optimum performance. In my case, as a former table tennis professional, this would involve a 15-minute warm-up and a 45-minute practice session followed by ten minutes of solitude to run through some mental exercises. Each aspect of preparation was planned in conjunction with a technical expert. Nothing was left to chance.

Over at Lakeside, on the other hand, the players’ lounge is a bar. Nothing wrong with that except for the fact that preparation consists of a backslapping conversation with a few chums, a stint on one of the practice boards and a tug on the shirt from one of the officials to indicate that the match is about to start. There are no coaches or psychologists mulling around. The only nod to sporting modernity is the occasional flexing of the shoulders.

Not even the alcohol consumption seems to be calibrated. Andy Fordham necked three bottles of beer and two double brandies in the 30 minutes leading up to his first-round match with Simon Whitlock, but not in a way to suggest that he was counting. As he walked towards the curtain for his match he grabbed and swigged another bottle. Rather naively, I ventured the proposition that he might be a little tipsy. The consensus was that he was far too sober.

Whitlock was abstemious by comparison, downing a few vodkas and a couple of Jack Daniels and coke. Afterwards I asked whether this was the amount he always drank before big matches. “Nah,” he said in a clipped Aussie accent. “I came down to the lounge quite early so I just kept drinking until it took away the edge. I don’t really have a set quantity.” Pure sporting anarchy.

None of this is intended to criticise, merely to note that darts players approach matches in a way that disappeared from other sports circa 1950. One could sum it up in one word: amateurism. That is not to say that the players do not get paid — the first prize at Lakeside is £60,000 — but rather that they lack rigour. Psychologists, physiologists, video analysts — no top sportsman outside darts would be unfamiliar with these methods. When I mentioned them to Ted Hankey, he giggled.

Darts is locked in an age of pre-scientific innocence, something that many might regard philosophically superior to out-and-out professionalism. After all, rigour can be tyrannical. Read a great novel at leisure and it is pleasurable. Read the same novel for an English Literature A level and it is robbed of all romanticism. Darts players love their sport so much that they stay on after defeat to watch. The first thing I did after I was knocked out of the Sydney Olympics was to book the next available flight home.

Modern sport is an exercise in deconstruction, a breaking down of everything into component parts so that it can be put together again with the aid of experts. Coaches are no longer gnarled old gurus who spout old wives’ tales but white-coated bores with clipboards. Science, like money, has altered the philosophy of professional sport. It has become something to be learnt, not lived.

Darts players are different. They would still compete at the World Championships if the prize-money dried up and if no one was watching but the missus and a few chums. They are visibly bemused by the raucous attendance of 1,500 fans and, still more, by the presence of TV cameras. They enjoy the acclaim but you can see that their love of the sport transcends anything so ephemeral. Winning is a bonus. Stuff the science.

matthew.syed@mps-sports.com