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Mike De Decker admits he shut himself off from darts completely after last month's painful PDC World Championship defeat to David Munyua. "That game kind of summed up my year," he told Darts News. "I had good patches and really bad patches, and that was one of the patches that wasn't so good."

He had taken control early, storming into a twoset lead before the unease began to seep in. "It was strange, really - I was 2-0 up and suddenly I felt nervous," he added. "And once he got that first set, something in me just went, yeah... you're going to lose this. That's not a good thing to have when you're 2-0 or 2-1 up."

Although he says that moment is in the past, forgetting it didn't come quickly. As a result, he wasn't able to watch much of the World Championship afterwards. "None," he admitted. "It hurt too much to watch the Worlds.

"You can restrict certain pages on Instagram as well, so I restricted the PDC and all darts-related content pages. Yeah, I just couldn't look at it. I've been trying to survive Christmas for the last five years and then it's just not working on that stage and it's frustrating."

During his time at Alexandra Palace, those doubts never really left him."A couple of times, yes, this year," he revealed when asked if he'd felt similar nerves in other matches. "I think just because the confidence hasn't been there like it was in 2023 or 2024. Before I changed to Mission, I played with the same set of darts for like eight or nine years. So to then have to switch to a different setup, it took me longer to get used to them than I expected."

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Mentally, De Decker believes he's finally moved past a key hurdle. "I've made some steps that I didn't think I was ever going to do," he explained. "Privately then, and it's been helping out a lot about how to deal with certain stuff and certain moments. I'm in a better place with my darts and mentally than last year. I want to do well in every tournament and I just want to be playing well again.

"I don't necessarily have to win titles - just the feeling that I'm playing well would be a massive boost after last year. I do a lot of best-of-19 games, so first to 10," he says. "And my average has been up in the high 90s, low 100s. That's practice - everyone can play well in practice. It's on the stage and in the PDC tournaments that you have to show that."

The Premier League is still part of the dream, even if it sits a long way off. "Everyone wants to be in the Premier League, or everyone wants to be in the Premier League just once," De Decker remarked. "It's the biggest honour in darts in my eyes, because you get selected as one of the top eight players of the world. It would be a massive, massive thing. But realism remains - I have to play a lot better than I did last year."