I suffered with dartitis after my brother would wait an hour for me to throw – now I’ve just won on World Champs debut

BERRY VAN PEER secured an emotional 3-2 victory over Luke Woodhouse at the PDC World Championships.

The 27-year-old won on his Alexandra Palace debut – but just being in the draw was a huge success for him.

Berry van Peer reacts won on his World Champs debutPA

Sky Sports

The Ducth star cried at the oche due to suffering dartitis[/caption]

Van Peer is a former World Youth Championship runner-up and was tipped to take darts by storm.

However, his career nearly came to a premature end due to an awful case of “dartitis” in front of thousands back in 2020.

The condition sees players stepping up to the oche lose fine motor skills without any explanation.

It can create muscle spams and unusual contraction in the thrower’s hand, making it challenging for them to let go of the dart.

The exact cause of dartitis is unknown but most believe it is an impact of performance anxiety.

Van Peer suffered from it when playing against legend Gary Anderson at the Grand Slam of Darts in Wolverhampton three years ago.

The Dutchman struggled to throw and was left in tears during his match as fans chanted his name to offer support.

Van Peer vowed to come back stronger and not let dartitis stop his career.

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On his road to recovery, he said: “Getting over dartitis was mostly just practising, keeping all the positives thoughts, like results from years ago, and removing the negatives thoughts.

“I found a way of visualising what I’m going to hit. So if I have a 76 checkout to go for, I’ll visualise that I’m going for treble 20, double 18. That helped me a lot.

“Breathing patterns have helped a little bit too. Confidence is a lot, especially mentally.

“Practice was hell really. Me and my brother always practice together. He just stood there waiting for me to finish my throw, he couldn’t care less.

“He was like ‘I will just wait’. Sometimes it took so long.

“People would say to him ‘you practice with Berry all the time, isn’t that annoying?’ And he’d be like ‘why, I had all the time in the world, I don’t care if he takes an hour to throw the dart or 10 seconds, it doesn’t matter’.

“He’s always supported me and has played a very important part in my life.”

On what caused his dartitis, Van Peer explained: “It’s a strange story. I was over alert so I would get scared from everything around me.

“If you just walked by me and said ‘hey’, I would be like ‘oh Jesus, where did you come from?’

“Once that started, it was hard to tell my brain it was nothing.”

Van Peer suffered another setback at the end of last year as he lost his PDC Tour card.

But a fantastic 2023 has seen him regain his card, top the Challenge Tour and qualify for the World Champs.

He faces Josh Rock in the next round.