Aspinall has “the winning feeling” with his new darts after edging past Suljovic

Nathan Aspinall was able to turn his 9-7 deficit into a 10-9 victory after surviving five match darts against Mensur Suljovic in the second round at the Masters.

Aspinall announced last week during a chat with the PDC that he would be changing his darts going into the 2021 season.”Since I’ve been in darts I have had two or three different darts manufacturers in my career. Now I’m with Target and they made my darts based on Leighton Rees darts which is all I have ever known.” Speaking in more detail about the design of the darts the Asp said: “It's the same shape but they but there is more grip at the back, without crowds the venue is so cold, you are in big arenas which usually has a few thousand people in it and now there is like twenty people in there, so I was struggling to grip my darts.”

The former UK Open champion also went on to say that it was a permanent change and that we would not be seeing him go back to the old set of darts.”No that's it now. They are done (the old darts). If I had lost that game then I wouldn't know, but I won that game and you’ll never see those darts again. I'm one of those guys who doesn’t like change but once I do change, I will commit to it.”

Aspinall also stated he sees the fact that he's defending a lot of ranking money this season as a motivation rather than pressure. ''I think last year I got a bit complacent. I was top of the Premier League and top eight in the rankings and I was turning up to events thinking if I play steady then I will get through the early rounds.”