DUZZA IT HURT? ABSOLUTELY
Former BDO world champ Glen Durrant on his slide down the rankings and his determination to keep on fighting
GLEN DURRANT has endured the year from hell when his form went downhill faster than the Cresta Run.
As he tried to restore his confidence by going back to the pub circuit on Teesside, Duzza averaged 63 and felt embarrassed for his mates who didn’t know where to look. And on a day at the races, an ill-mannered punter advised him to take up snooker “because you’re s*** at darts”.
Even with his form unravelling, Durrant deserved better than gobby critics with short memories who overlooked his three world titles and Premier League crown.
Duzza, 51, does not blame a close encounter with Covid last year for his game falling apart, although it appears to have accelerated his slide down to No.24 in the rankings.
But his decline has been so acute that he is heading back to Alexandra for the William Hill PDC World Championship with only one target – to win a game of darts on TV again, a privilege he last enjoyed almost 12 months ago.
In a brutally candid assessment of his form falling off a cliff, the pride of Middlesbrough pulled no punches.
“At the moment I’m the guy who has played in two Premier League seasons,” said Durrant.
“I was the champion in one and the first player ever to finish with no points in the other. When you are holed up in a hotel for a week, and you are losing 7-0 or 7-1 every night, it’s a long walk back to your room.
“Unfortunately, I’m a thinker, I take things to heart. Someone with Simon Whitlock’s character would just brush it off – but it hurt like hell, and we were in a Covid bubble so you couldn’t have your family around you to insulate you from the pain.
“It was purely a financial decision to go through with it, in the hope that something would click, but it was a disaster, and if I thought it couldn’t get any worse, I was wrong. I went back to play in the Teesside Super League, at the Cargo Fleet Club in Middlesbrough where I used to average 110 – and I was averaging 63.
“I thought playing in a relaxed environment among friends would help but every dart I threw felt like the last dart of the worst Premier League season in history.
“The tension and anxiety was there for all to see, and it was so tough for my friends to see me struggling like that. It was embarrassing for them. It’s the equivalent of a golfer suffering the yips. But I keep gritting my teeth and waking up to a morning thinking, ‘Today’s the day when it clicks’.
“I’ve had a terrible year, but if I never win another darts match in my life, I’ll still be a three-times world champion and a Premier League winner.”
Durrant is considering going back to work part-time, or starting his own coaching business, so the search for mislaid form does not become too obsessive. But he will not be chucking his arrows away, insisting: “One thing I’ve never been is a quitter.
“By hook or crook or Teesside steel, I want to be competitive again, and if I can win just one game at Ally Pally it could work wonders for my self-belief.
“Although I was in a dark place earlier this year, I don’t want people to feel sorry for me.
“But I genuinely didn’t realise how much impact my success had on local pride. White van man has been pulling up at traffic lights and asking, ‘What’s happened to you, Duzza? Pull yourself together, man’.
“One day I went to Redcar races and this chap says to me, ‘Are you still playing snooker, Glen?’ I looked at him a bit confused, told him that’s not my game and he adds, ‘Well you ought to start – because you are s*** at darts’.
“People have short memories. I bet he wasn’t saying that when I won a hat-trick of world titles at the Lakeside. I’ve done a lot of soul-searching, looking at the mental side of the sport, and maybe I’ve been overthinking it.
“One thing I refuse categorically to do is to blame Covid.
“Yes, it hit me hard and I was poorly for a while, but the mechanics of my throw were showing signs of fatigue months before I was ill.
“But I’m fit and feeling well now. There’s only so much Homes Under The Hammer a man can watch on daytime TV without going stir-crazy.
“So I’m on the practice board and there are chinks of light at the end of the tunnel.”