An eye for detail has shown Linda Joy the way to the top of the sporting-clays world.

When Linda Joy gets ready to shoot her shotgun, it doesn't matter where she is — the living room, the kitchen, even her automobile. She hasn't broken anything yet. Then again, most of Joy's practice takes place without a gun in her hands, or anything else for that matter. Most of her practice involves putting her eyeballs through a workout.

"Visual preparation is almost as important as going out and shooting," says Joy, a competitor in the 2000 and 2001 Great Outdoor Games. "Most people don't realize that the eye is a muscle you have to properly train."

In shooting games where hand/eye coordination is critical, the eyes are often considered less important than the hands. "A lot of people think they have 20/20 vision and that's good enough," Joy says. "But a big part of shooting is picking up the target, focusing and then taking the shot. You do that with your eyes, not your hands."

That revelation came to her one night while watching a television show on PBS. The show centered on a visual therapist who helps baseball players pick up fast-moving baseballs when they're in the batter's box. "I wasn't afraid to say I needed help in that area," says Joy, who has been shooting competitively since 1988.

Others might have argued after looking at her resume. Along with being selected for the Great Outdoor Games, Joy is a World Champion in Sporting Clays, the 1997 Shooter of the Year in the Men and Women's division of the U.S. Open Championships, a 1998 Pan American Games Gold Medalist and the National Pro-Am Champion. Although she has a long list of titles, Joy has never stopped striving to be better, even if it means giving her performance a, ahem, hard look.

Joy points to baseball great Mark McGwire. "If you look at him when he's in the batter's box and watch the intensity and focus in his eyes, he just bores into that ball," Joy says. "It's obvious he's focused on what he's doing. I think that's a weak link for a lot of people."

To make sure it's not a weak link in her performance, Joy spends as much time training at home as she does on the range. Her exercises might include taping a small white piece of paper to a blade on a ceiling fan, sitting nearby and keeping her gaze focused on the moving object. On one door jam in her home, Joy has taped a series of letters on each side of the door. When she's ready to train, she sits in front of the door, focuses on one letter then moves her eye to the other side of the door to focus on another letter.

"The purpose of the exercise is to help improve my eye's tracking skills," says Joy. "I stare at a spot on the door and use my periphery to pick out the letter and then sweep to the other side of the door, moving only my eyes, and read the letter on the other side on the same line."

	"Most people don't realize the eye is a muscle you have to train," Joy says.

The exercises don't stop when she's away from home either. Joy tapes a transparent letter to her car's windshield. While she's driving, she'll focus on that letter then move her eyes to a far away object and focus quickly on it.

"It's important how fast your eyes recover after a focus change," Joy says. The exercise comes into play when a shooter has to focus on double targets that may travel from near to far or from far to near. "The overall strength of our eyes is what good vision is all about."

Knowing her eyes will perform well makes Joy a more confident shooter, one who's at ease when she steps up to the shooting platform.

"In this sport, I think the mental game is as important as the physical game," she says. "The two work hand in hand. You can have the best mental attitude, but you don't have the techniques down, you're not going to do well. And vice-versa."