Inala-raised Raymond Smith began playing darts in 1997 when his father’s team was down a player.
He stepped in for the game and went on to navigate a decade of darts playing, alongside other sports and work commitments, on and off.
Now, Mr Smith, known in professional dart circles as ‘The Guru’, is the highest ranked Australian in the World Darts Federation leaderboard – sitting at number 12.
In November he won a match at the Australian Darts Association’s ANZ Premier League tournament against eight other competitors.
“It was awesome playing in front of the home crowd,” he said.
“Having a very vocal crowd with you, gives you a lot of energy, excitement and a lot of desire to want to play well.”
Mr Smith said he began playing darts consistently in 2012, when he became fascinated by mental strategies used in elite sports.
Professional darts playing requires immense discipline, technique, stillness, calm and focus in order to deliver a quality performance.
“It’s important to understand where your body and health are, and use box breathing methods to try and keep control of your heart rate,” he said.
“I began to look at darts more of as more of a complex sport than a pub game, because I was playing cricket at the time as well and I found a lot of similarities between darts, cricket and golf.
“So when I got more involved in darts the game was on a whole different level.”
In 2022, Mr Smith’s son Ky, 23, competed in their respective events at the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) World Championship making them to first father and son to compete at a darts world championship in the same year.
“He’s had darts in his hands since he was six months old,” he said.
“I never wanted him to play darts at the start, I wanted him to go on to do other things, because he was very good at a lot of different sports.
“But I’m pretty excited that I got to have that experience with him, it was quite surreal.”
In the last five years darts has seen greater recognition as a professional sport, which has helped to propel it further, Mr Smith said.
“Darts didn’t have a fantastic culture at the time [the 2010s] It was still seen as a pub game, whereas now in Australia, especially, it’s becoming a lot more professional,” Mr Smith said.
Before competing regularly in national and international tournaments, Mr Smith had never left Queensland.
Now he’s a frequent flyer to destinations like Austria, Denmark, Turkey, South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, the United Kingdom and New Zealand.
But on Thursday night you’ll find Mr Smith playing darts in Inala.
“I’m pretty proud to come from Inala if I’m perfectly honest, it’s helped a lot with my journey through life,” he said.
“It used to be very negative when I was growing up there, along the lines of our criminal undertones or low social economic background undertones.
“It was always good to me when I was growing up and it’s given me a lot of opportunities.”
