How to Grip a Dart: Three Grips and How to Find Yours
- Matt Tizzard
- 4 days ago
- 8 min read
Your grip is the only part of your body that touches the dart. Everything else in your throw, the stance, the backswing, the elbow, the follow through, exists to deliver that grip to a release point. Get the grip wrong and you spend years compensating for it with the rest of your technique.
Which is why it is worth an hour of proper attention, and why the advice you usually get, "hold it however feels comfortable", is not good enough. Comfortable and repeatable are different things.
This is how to work out which grip suits you, how much pressure to use, and which faults to check for.
The only rule that matters - How to Grip a Dart
There is no correct dart grip. Walk down the practice boards at any PDC event and you will see front grips, rear grips, two fingers, five fingers, pencil grips and things that look like they should not work at all.
What every one of those players has in common is that their grip is identical on every dart, every time.
That is the standard to judge yourself against. Not whether your grip looks like somebody else's, but whether you could pick up a dart blindfolded, ten times, and land your fingers in exactly the same place ten times. If you cannot, that is your problem, and it is a bigger one than which grip you have chosen.
Repeatability first. Everything else is preference.
The three grip positions
Grip position means where along the barrel your fingers sit.
Grip | Where your fingers sit | Tends to suit | Trade-off |
Front | Towards the point, fingers near the front of the barrel | Front-weighted barrels, players with a shorter, more compact throw | More control over the nose of the dart, but the dart can drop early if you release late |
Middle | On or near the balance point of the barrel | Most players, most barrels, and the sensible default if you are unsure | Balanced and forgiving, but offers less feel at the extremes |
Rear | Towards the flight end of the barrel | Rear-weighted barrels, players with a longer, more relaxed throwing action | Encourages a smooth release and a nose-up flight, but is less stable and harder to repeat |
Match your grip to the balance point, not to a pro
Here is the bit most articles miss. Your grip position should relate to where the barrel's weight actually sits.
Find your barrel's balance point by resting it across one finger until it sits level. That is where the dart wants to be held. A front-weighted barrel gripped at the back will feel nose-heavy and tip in flight. A rear-weighted barrel gripped at the front will feel like you are dragging it.
If your grip feels wrong no matter what you do, there is a decent chance you are holding a barrel whose weight distribution fights your natural hand position. That is a barrel problem, not a technique problem, and it is one of the few times I will tell a player to change their darts.
How many fingers
Two fingers, thumb and index. Minimal contact, very quick release. It works, and a small number of professionals use it, but it gives you very little stability and it punishes any inconsistency in the thumb. Not where I would start a new player.
Three fingers, thumb, index and middle. The most common grip in the sport and the right default for most people. Enough contact to control the dart, few enough contact points that the release stays clean.
Four fingers, adding the ring finger. More support and a feeling of security, which some players need. The cost is an extra finger that has to clear the dart at exactly the right moment, and an extra thing to go wrong under pressure.
Five fingers. Rare, and usually a sign that the player is holding on rather than gripping. If your little finger is on the barrel, ask yourself what job it is doing.
The general principle: use the fewest fingers that give you a stable, repeatable hold. Every additional contact point is another opportunity for the release to go wrong.
Where the remaining fingers go matters too. Splayed out is fine, curled in is fine, as long as it is the same every time. What is not fine is fingers that flutter or change position between darts one, two and three.
Grip pressure
This is where most players lose more points than they realise.
Too tight is the near-universal fault. A tight grip does three things, all bad. It delays your release, which sends the dart low. It transmits tension up through the wrist and forearm into the rest of the throw. And it gets tighter under pressure, so the fault is at its worst in exactly the moments that decide matches.
The pen test. Hold the dart with roughly the pressure you would use to hold a pen while writing a shopping list. Not the pressure you would use to sign something important, and not so loose the pen falls out. That is the range.
The tell-tale signs of gripping too tight:
The dart wobbles or the flight kicks in the air
Your fingertips are white where they touch the barrel
You can feel the knurling pressing into your fingers after a session
Your darts land low in the bed you were aiming at
The pressure must not change during the throw. This is the more advanced version of the same point. Many players start with correct pressure and then squeeze during the backswing, usually without any awareness of it. Film yourself from the side at high frame rate and watch your fingers between the top of the backswing and the release. If they are working, that is your fault.
Under match pressure, grip tension rises for everybody. If you want the detail on that, I have written separately about what actually changes in your throw when you are nervous.
Five questions that tell you which grip is yours
Work through these honestly with a dart in your hand and a board in front of you.
1. Where do your fingers land when you are not thinking? Put three darts on a table, look away, then pick one up and throw it without inspecting your hand first. Do it ten times. Where your fingers naturally land is a strong signal, because it is what your hand will default to under pressure regardless of what you have been practising.
2. Where is the balance point of your barrel? Balance the barrel across a finger. If your natural grip is a long way from that point, either your grip or your barrel needs to change.
3. What angle does the dart sit in the board? Nose down suggests a late release or an over-tight front grip. Very nose up suggests a rear grip with an early release. Neither is automatically wrong, but a dart that lands at a different angle on every throw is a grip consistency problem.
4. Do your darts land low when it matters? Consistent low misses are the signature of grip pressure and a delayed release. Aiming higher will not fix it.
5. Does your grip survive three darts? Film a full visit from the side. Compare dart one and dart three. If the grip has migrated, you have a regripping problem, and that is more common than any of the position faults below.
Four common grip faults
Gripping too tight. Covered above, and the single most common fault in the sport. Test it with the pen comparison and check it again at the end of a long session, because pressure creeps as you tire.
The index finger doing the work. The index finger should be part of the hold, not the engine. When it dominates, players effectively push the dart rather than releasing it, which produces a flat, forced flight and a lot of left and right variance. If you can feel your index finger driving through the dart at release, that is the fault.
Thumb creep. The thumb slides along the barrel, either during the throw or between darts, so each of your three darts is thrown from a slightly different position. Diagnose it with a small strip of tape on the barrel where your thumb should sit, then throw fifty darts and see whether you are still finding the tape.
Fingers not clearing. The dart drags on release because one finger stays in contact fractionally too long. Usually a sign of too many contact points or too much pressure. This produces the classic sticky release where the dart comes out flat and dies.
If you decide to change your grip
Two warnings.
Do not do it mid-season. A grip change feels wrong for two to four weeks and your scores will drop before they rise. Change it in a quiet period, not the week before a league final.
Change one thing at a time. Position, or finger count, or pressure. Not all three,
because if it improves you will not know what helped, and if it gets worse you will not know what to undo.
Give any change a minimum of two weeks of daily throwing before you judge it.
Comfort is a terrible short-term indicator, because your old grip will feel comfortable for a while purely because it is familiar.
Frequently asked questions
How should you hold a dart?With the fewest fingers that give you a stable, repeatable hold, positioned near your barrel's balance point, at roughly the pressure you would use to hold a pen. The thumb sits behind the balance point to support the dart.
How many fingers should you use to hold a dart?Three is the most common and the sensible default: thumb, index and middle finger. Two and four both work for some players. Use the fewest that let you repeat the grip exactly.
Is there a correct dart grip?No. There is only a repeatable grip. Professionals use widely different grips, and what they share is consistency, not a common position.
Why do my darts wobble in the air?Most often a grip that is too tight, or a finger that does not clear the dart cleanly at release. Check your grip pressure first, then reduce your contact points.
Should my thumb be in front of or behind the balance point?Behind it. The thumb supports the dart from underneath and slightly to the rear of where the weight sits, which is what keeps the nose stable through the release.
How long does it take to change a dart grip?Expect two to four weeks of it feeling wrong before it settles. Change one element at a time and avoid doing it during a competitive season.
Work with me at DartsMatt - How to Grip a Dart
Grip is one of those things that is very hard to fix on your own, because the fault is happening in your hand at a speed you cannot see and in a place you cannot easily film.
I coach players online and face to face from my studio in Worcester, from complete beginners to county standard. I am a Sight Right qualified coach, and a good deal of what I do in a first session is exactly this: slow the throw down, find out where the dart is actually leaving your hand, and fix the two or three things that are costing you the most.
If your darts land low, wobble, or scatter for reasons you cannot pin down, that is a solvable problem and usually a quicker fix than you would expect.
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