"I had more than a few beers — I had a lot of beers!": Nathan Aspinall made flight home from Munich after wild title celebrations

Nathan Aspinall made a strong start to his European Darts Grand Prix campaign with a dominant 6-1 victory over Jeffrey de Zwaan, underlining his growing confidence on the European Tour stage. The Englishman, who lifted the title in Munich just two weeks ago, now sets up a last-16 clash with James Wade.

Fresh from that recent triumph, Aspinall admitted he feels completely at home in this environment — and that winning feeling hasn’t gone anywhere as he spoke to DartsNews.

“I just love the European Tour, I feel at home on that stage,” he said to DartsNews. “Whenever I walk out on the European Tour — last year I had a lot of success on it — and this year I won two weeks ago when I wasn’t in the best of form.”

In a bid to protect that momentum, Aspinall made the deliberate decision to skip last week’s ProTour events, prioritising confidence over match practice.

“I chose to pull out of the Pro Tours last week because I didn’t want any negativity coming into this tournament,” he explained. “It wasn’t my best performance, but I felt so confident throughout the whole game.”

That confidence was highlighted by a spectacular 170 checkout — one of the standout moments of the match — which Aspinall believes says plenty about where his game currently stands.

“Taking that 170 out shows where my game’s at — it felt effortless, you know what I mean?”

With another deep run now firmly in his sights, the former major champion is already looking ahead to the latter stages of the weekend.

“I’m looking forward to a big day tomorrow and hopefully I can go back-to-back.”

Aspinall also reflected on his title-winning night in Munich, where celebrations almost threatened to derail his travel plans.

“I had more than a few beers — I had a lot of beers!” he joked. “But I made my flight. I made it… it was a vile flight, it wasn’t good, but I made it.”

The 170 finish has become something of a trademark for Aspinall, and he was quick to stake his claim as the best in the business over that iconic checkout. “Maybe Simon Whitlock back in the day — he was big on the 170,” he said. “But no… it’s mine. I don’t have many things over the other players, but the 170 is definitely mine.”

Another talking point from Munich was Aspinall’s surprise walk-on change, debuting Lose Yourself — a move that caught plenty of attention. Whether fans will see it again remains to be seen. “We’ll see if we get to Sunday night.”