Van Barneveld puts difficult World Championship behind him: 'Feel like I have not even participated'

Raymond van Barneveld has put his shocking defeat to Darius Labanauskas in the second round of the World Championship behind him. Meanwhile 'Barney' has set his sight on 2019, which will be his last season on the PDC circuit.

Van Barneveld was doing punditry work for RTL7 earlier this week, where he reviewed his World Championship campaign shortly. The 51-year-old made clear conclusions. "It was very difficult for me to deal with that defeat. I feel like I have not even played at this World Championship. We all knew I had a tough draw, but it seemed I was not ready for it", the five-time world champion said. He started panicking during his match against Labanauskas, because he was going to lose against someone from Lithuania. "I was not focused in the first set, then I played decent and in the third set I had a lot of chances." "I missed those opportunities and that surprised me. Then I started panicking because I was losing to someone from Lithuania", Van Barneveld explained on the Dutch darts channel.