Just over four years ago Brendan Dolan was getting really fed up.
Ahead of him lay the World Grand Prix darts tournament in Dublin and a few months later, the World Championships in London, in his mind, a swansong.
Aged 38, and ranked 36th, he was close to a return to painting and decorating for a living.
Then came that nine-darter. He became ‘The History Maker’. Perfect legs had been done before, of course - 26 on TV - but none like this.
The double-in start format makes the feat even more difficult but the Fermanagh man kept his cool to produce nine immaculate darts on the way to a semi-final victory over the defending champion James Wade.
“Leading into that tournament I thought maybe the World Championship at the end of that year was going to be my last,” Dolan told RTÉ Sport.
“It just raised my profile immensely. Between the nine-darter happening, plus the fact that I got to the final, it just possibly redirected my darts. I probably didn’t have the finances to continue with darts.
“In my head it gave me another two years. It gave me a lot of confidence because I was in a TV major final with the best player in the world at the time [Phil Taylor], the best player that ever lived and, you know, he didn’t walk all over me either [a 6-3 loss].
“It just built my confidence up, [proved] that I do belong in the PDC, that I’m a worthy person.
“Before that I was probably thinking, ‘I don’t know if I have the confidence, do I really belong here? I’m only kidding myself’.
“It just built my confidence up, proved that I do belong in the PDC, that I’m a worthy person"
"Things like that go through your head, especially when you’re not getting the right results at times.
“It was a massive boost for my career. Now it’s my livelihood, it’s something I have to work on and keep improving on.”
That run saw him jump up the rankings and he was as high as number 10 earlier this year. But, he admits, 2015 has been far from plain sailing.
As he gets ready to face Kyle Anderson (below) in the first round of the Worlds at Alexandra Palace on Friday evening, he knows he must up his game, in particular his form in front of the dedicated Sky Sports Darts TV cameras.
“This year I wasn’t too bad on the floor [non-televised events] but on TV I have performed well below par,” he says honestly.
“That’s why I’m slipping down the rankings now to 18. I just feel the TV on. I’m one of these players, and it’s the same on the floor, if I get past the first round I’m really, really hard to stop after that.
“This year I’ve got beaten in the first round in the last eight or nine TV tournaments. It’s not good for confidence.
“You start to doubt yourself a bit, trying to make excuses that maybe I have relaxed too much, even let my throw go without realising it.”
Unseeded Australian Anderson is also famous for a nine-dart finish, hitting his two years ago on the World Championship stage on the same evening that Terry Jenkins landed a perfect leg.
And in preparation for the challenge, Dolan has joined up with Winmau darts and visited the factory for a recalibration, hoping to offset the current dip.
“You can always change and you can always improve"
The 42-year-old explains: “They line the body up where it should be, make sure the arm is straight in front of the 20.
“Their job is to keep the hand straight, to keep the motion the same.
“They use this eyesight-liner board to do it with but I already did that without thinking about it, that was my natural stance.
“What they saw with me was instead of taking the throw from in between the two eyes, the eye-line vision, I was taking it to the right side of my cheeks, and they said that could be a reason for some elements of inconsistency.
“That would mean that when I was changing from scoring to shooting doubles that the throw was different, longer, things like that. I’ve changed my throw now to try and throw from the front of my face.
“It suited me too because I found it actually easy to change to in front of my face. I’ve had a bad year and I’m just thinking, maybe did I get too lax and changed my throw without even knowing myself?”
“You can always change and you can always improve."
The Belcoo native has made the second round for the last three years but his current form means he must focus on his first-ever meeting with Anderson, and not spend a second looking at who else is on his side of the draw.
“For me I’ve Kyle Anderson, I’ve got to get rid of Kyle Anderson,” the Northern Ireland international says.
“He’s probably the only player that I haven’t beaten before because I’ve never played him before.
“Everybody else in the tournament, I’ve played and beaten. For me it’s about if you do it once, you can do it any amount of times, it’s about perfecting your own game.
“Beat Kyle and then see who comes my way.”
Off the oche, where he’s doing three to four hours a day practice, Dolan enjoys watching other sports and relaxes, as much as one can, following the fortunes of the Republic of Ireland, Liverpool, Celtic and Barcelona.
“At home, the Gaelic, Fermanagh, but that doesn’t last long enough too often, that’s unfortunate. Not enough days out,” he says of this year's All-Ireland football quarter-finalists.
Other Irish in action at the William Hill World Darts Championship are Mick McGowan, who plays China’s Qiang Sun in a preliminary game on Friday for the right to play Mark Webster, while Daryl Gurney opens up against another Welsh man, Jamie Lewis, tonight.
Scotland’s Gary Anderson is the defending champion after beating Taylor 7-6 in a thrilling final last January.
This year’s £1.5million event, with £300,000 for the winner, also features former champions Taylor, Raymond van Barneveld, Adrian Lewis and Michael van Gerwen, the current world number one who has reached the final of every major ranking tournament since his semi-final exit to Anderson in last year’s World Championship.
Tonight’s schedule:
Andy Boulton v Per Laursen (Preliminary)
Jamie Lewis v Daryl Gurney
Peter Wright v Keegan Brown
Gary Anderson v Boulton/Laursen
