As MVG reaches another World Championship final, just a few months after “The Wizard of Winmau” improved its shuttles, it seemed only right to recall Lee Huxtable’s extraordinary record:
In the world of Harry Potter, it may be that “the wand chooses the wizard.” But in the world of tungsten and steel, wizards “leave it to Lee.”
Lee Huxtable is responsible for the raft shots of world champions and majors. Current trophy winner Luke Humphries, Dutch icon Michael van Gerwen are among the club’s members, as well as recent world title winners Peter Wright, Gerwyn Price, Neil Duff and Wayne Warren.
In other sports, such as golf, such success would provide legendary status and personal reach
and possibly a large financial reward, imagine one man designing, refining and manufacturing bats for Tiger Woods, Rory McKilroy and Justin Rose or tennis rackets for Federer, Nadal Djokovic and Murray!
When it comes to darts, very few geeks outside the industry have heard Lee’s name other than in passing.
Creating darts for elite or aspiring elite players requires a very delicate balance. For Lee, it’s the result of over a decade of matching players with Winmau and Red Dragon.
I first heard about Lee from managers and players who raved about his skills when they visited the Welsh company’s headquarters for a fitting. These sessions require a lot of talking and a lot of testing.
Lee spends as much time trying to understand what the player really wants as he does creating early test sets.
Sometimes it’s a quick process, one player takes what he thought was an old, rare dart. Lee listened and paid close attention to what the player liked about them and produced two sets. Within an hour, the player chose one and spent the rest of the session on cosmetics.
More often than not, it’s a long back-and-forth to get the basics down, followed by a tedious testing and tuning process that can take hours and even repeat sessions where kits are shipped back and forth across the country.
One player proved to be a particularly difficult challenge. Imagine a movie scene with wands flying everywhere when Olivander can’t find a wand for Harry Potter himself. Then the lone wand you forgot about rises to get your attention…
Read more about Lee’s extraordinary contribution – and who was that difficult client? – IN Dart World 588 (print) now!
—–ENDS—–
Images: Darts World
