PDC World Championship: Brendan Dolan says ‘I have a game to play the best and beat the best’ as he bids for glory | Darts News

Brendan Dolan is hoping to equal or better his 2019 quarter-final run

Twelve months ago, Brendan Dolan came agonisingly close to sending shockwaves around the World Championship.

‘The History Maker’ went toe-to-toe with eventual winner Gerwyn Price in the third round, before losing out in a last-leg decider.

The narrow margins still hurt.

“He [Price] thoroughly deserved his World Championship. But in my head, I’m thinking if I hadn’t missed the two darts at D11 in the first set, I might have won that game 3-1, rather than it going to a last leg. Then I’m thinking, ‘maybe I could have been a world champion’,” Dolan said.

“There is positivity [from it]. I have the game maybe to go all the way. Maybe this year, I have improved and got more consistent.

“From the Winter Series last year, I’m more consistent. I feel I still have a game, and definitely going all the way with the current world champion, managing to beat him on the floor this year when I won my tournament.

“He was the one who stopped me to do two-in-a-row the next day. I had a shot at the bull to win that game. He had a 106 average and I had 105. I know I can compete with the best at a high level. So going all the way on a TV stage with him as well, I know that I do have a game to play the best and beat the best. I take a lot of confidence from that.”

But rather than beating himself up, the 48-year-old knuckled back down, and has put together an impressive 2021 season.

Dolan ended 2021 in eighth position on the PDC Pro Tour Order of Merit, having claimed Players Championship 5 with a final win over Michael Smith in March.

Although that form tailed off as the year progressed, he breathed fire into his season with a run to the last four of the Players Championship Finals in November.

“I felt there was a lot of positive points, and getting results is a positive thing,” he said of the run that saw him overcome José De Sousa and Price.

“I feel at times, my scoring was great but at the same time my doubles were poor. At other stages during the tournament, my doubles were good. So I know if I got the two together, I’d be very hard to beat.

“There’s a lot of confidence and a lot of positives to take from that there.

“But I feel my best darts this year has been on the floor so far. Mostly earlier in the year. From September to before the Players Championship Finals, my doubles at crucial times just started to let me down a bit. Before the Players Championship Finals, I put in a lot of time on my doubles. And it seemed to work for the majority of the tournament.”

I do have a game to play the best and beat the best.

Dolan says his A-game can bring him deep at the Ally Pally

“It’s probably my best [year] in a long time,” he continued. “If I’m being honest, I’m playing a lot better now than I used to. I think the standard has risen so much in the last six or seven years. Now I’ve just got the hang of things, and I’ve raised my game with it. I do feel that this year in the Players Championship, I played really well. I had the odd bad result, but overall I felt my form was very good.

“To finish seventh just highlights that. It’s so hard to be in the top 16 on the floor, even the top 32.

“To finish seventh, definitely, I’ve been playing well.”

Fine-tuning his preparations

Small tweaks in his training have made all the difference for Dolan. Even moving his practice away from his living room, where the strain of reaching over the sofa to retrieve his darts from the board was taking its toll, and distractions were plenty.

“In my living room, I was over-fatigued. You’re leaning over, picking the darts. My mum was sitting there. She’s kind of watching the telly around me,” he said.

“My wife, before the [World] Matchplay last year, insisted that I change one of the bedrooms into a dart room: ‘That’s it, when you go in there, you close the door and nobody bothers you. You put proper dedicated practice in. You don’t have excuses to stop’.

“My wife – she’s full of good ideas! It has worked. Since then, there has been an improvement in my play.

“I’ve looked at the way I’m throwing. And I’ve analysed it – because of the way I threw slow, maybe the longer the day went on, the more my shoulder might have dropped millimetres. But that would mean that I’m throwing differently.

“I think that has improved. Definitely my scoring power and everything like that. That’s probably the main change over the last 18 months or that.”

Dolan feels he is on an upward trajectory

The waiting game

Dolan is one of the last players to enter the fray at Alexandra Palace this year.

The wait will be over for the 23rd seed when he takes to the oche on Thursday afternoon for his second-round match-up against Callan Rydz.

But he has been making good use of that time, putting in the hours on his practice board in his Fermanagh home. With the darts playing live on the screen beside his board, he inserts himself into the live situations, and creates an artificial competition against the players on the TV.

“I like to have it on in the background while I’m practising, just to keep my head in tune,” he said.

“If the referee calls they have 121 left, I put myself in that position, I step up to the board to hit 121. It’s just something – I challenge myself [to see] would I do it there and then, at that moment in time? Or not?

“I just love watching darts. I get an idea into the mentality of darts players, their pressure points, when they crumble and when they don’t.

“It always pays to watch, I think, and I love the game to watch. I’ll watch most of the sessions before I play, and when it comes to the day, that’s when I’m not watching anybody. I just look after myself.”

So while 89 players will have played at the Ally Pally this year before Dolan makes his bow – in his own way he has been competing right from the opening night.

Should he take care of business on Thursday afternoon, he will fly home on Thursday evening for Christmas, and return for a third-round clash with Nathan Aspinall.

He is hoping to have another memorable run at the Ally Pally.

“For me, I [always] hated playing at Christmas! I love Christmas at home, I used to love watching the darts on my telly, putting my feet up! I love just chilling out at home. And now to be the one on the telly at Christmas, I don’t enjoy it, because I miss out on being at home.

“I [since] dropped that attitude – ‘Why am I here? Oh, I have to go through this now’.

“I played well the last couple of years, even in defeats early on. My attitude has changed.

“When you do have to play at the Christmastime, I should be thankful that I’m in the tournament rather than regretting that I am.”

Should he equal or better his quarter-final run at the 2019 tournament, Dolan will not be complaining about a hectic Yuletide schedule.

We have seen flashes of brilliance throughout 2021 from him. If he brings that to the Ally Pally oche, he could have a fortnight to remember.