What is it?It's the line darts players stand behind before, as Sid Waddell might put it, they "toss their tungsten" at the board. The oche is 7ft, 9.25in from the face of the board, and is two feet wide. A raised oche is used in tournaments so the player can't cheat by inching forward – as if.
What's the origin of the term:Well, if darts historian Patrick Chaplin isn't sure, what hope have we? None. The only consensus we could find is that the word, as its sound suggests, derives from "hockey"; oche has been used only since the 1970s.
So, why hockey?Well, Chaplin's theory – and he's disproved most of the others – is that it comes from the old English word hocken, meaning to spit. Darts began in English pubs where the floors were covered in sawdust and "liberally furnished with spittoons", with the "hockey line determined by the length that a given player could spit from a position with his back to the dartboard".
Nice.
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