Devon Petersen – The Greatness

35 year old South African, Devon Petersen recently signed a contract with New Zealand’s own Shot Darts. Shot who are based in Katikati, a small town of 5,500 people located in the Bay of Plenty on the east coast of the North Island of New Zealand. With the announcement of the signing, came three new darts under Devon’s name. These have been named the Wisdom, Courage and Greatness which we will review later in this article.

Nicknamed “The African Warrior” Devon Petersen has been a professional dart player for well over a decade now having earned his PDC Pro Tour card for the 2011 year and shown that he can mix it with the best in the world. Devon is currently ranked 26th in the world based on earnings made over the past two years on the PDC circuit. That ranking is ahead of some very well known darts names which include Mensur Suljovic, Glen Durrant and Kim Huybrechts just to name a few. Devon’s ranking is helped by making the last 16 in the 2020 World Grand Prix and Grand Slam and last years World Championship and quarter finalist at last year’s UK Open. He hit a red-hot Raymond Smith in this years World’s champ’s in the second round as a seeded player. Whilst Devon’s form in recent months may have come off a little, perhaps due in part to his focus as a Sky Sports commentator, his form through 2019 to early 2021 has been world class and no doubt a reason why Shot Darts chased him and convinced him to move from his long time dart sponsor and supplier, Unicorn.

So what about this new “Devon Petersen” darts range from Shot Darts? These were released to the public just under a couple of weeks ago on the 24th of March. “The Wisdom” are a very nice 80% tungsten dart aimed at the market with a price point competitive with most alternatives out there. “The Courage” is a 90% tungsten dart for the more serious dart player but its “The Greatness” dart we have had for the last couple of weeks which we will review here.

The Greatness is also a 90% tungsten barrel that is certainly built for the serious dart player. Shot’s very own in-house design team collaborated closely with Devon on his dart range including this barrel to, as Shot themselves say “create a spectacular darts range with ingenious Iklwa spear grip” which can be seen in the Wisdom and Courage barrels especially.

Having thrown the Greatness dart, it is a testament to Shot’s design team as this “Iklwa spear grip” provides the perfect grip to throw solid darts. Hence the Greatness barrel is given a 4/5 grip rating. The Greatness dart has a reasonable length barrel between 51mm to 52mm depending on the weight dart you like. This puts the barrel length right in the centre of dart players needs with plenty of barrels much longer and also shorter. With a barrel width between 7.0mm and 7.3mm, (again depending on weight) the barrel provides plenty of room to hold the dart no matter how large your digits are and will suit most players.

The Greatness dart range comes in four different weights to choose from, being available in either 22g, 23g, 24g or 25 gram weight. Those weights would cover a large majority of dart players out there, so there’s something there for all.

I was initially impressed by the colouring of this dart, something that Shot Darts is well known for. These barrels are missile-shaped and are coated in a protective black titanium with gold accents. After having thrown these darts for nearly two weeks now, I’ve found the grip to be very good and would agree with its “4/5 grip rating”. Whilst the barrels are said to be “rear weighted” I struggled a little to be too accurate, (nothing new there though), only because I typically throw a front weighted torpedo shaped dart. But the definition supplied by Shot darts says this barrel is “mid-rear balanced” which I would suggest would suit the majority of dart players out there.

The dart comes in a full set and along with the three 90% tungsten barrels, is supplied with 3 x Devon Petersen Greatness flights in gold, sized “small standard”, 100 microns and also 3 x koi carbon shafts with spring ring, in-between size.

If you can get a set, have a throw with these as we would recommend the Greatness dart especially. All three of Devon Petersen’s darts range can be viewed online at Auckland based www.bullseyedarts.co.nz

Straight Arrows everyone.