INTERVIEW: Hempel aiming to remain in top 64 in 2023: "That's the absolute minimum goal"

On 11 and 12 February the first two Players Championship tournaments of the year will take place. After Florian Hempel failed to qualify for the World Darts Championship via the Pro Tour at the end of 2022, he is motivated to achieve this goal in the current year.

"I'm definitely looking more positively at the Players Championships than I did last year," Hempel explained in an interview with dartsnews.de.

"Last year I came out of a good form, out of a good World Championship and had the attitude: this will work out somehow. And then you got into a bit of a whirlpool. There were one or two bad results. Then you thought, 'OK, I'll fix that somehow over the course of the year.' That didn't happen."

"This year I'm going into the first Players Championship next weekend with full power and I want to show from the start that I'm back on Tour. That I can show good results, bring in a lot of prize money and make the World Championship via the Pro Tour as good as safe this year, qualify for as many European Tour events as I can."

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But he wants to shine not only on the Pro Tour, but also at the majors. "I would also like to play in one or two majors, outside of the World Championship and the UK Open, where I play anyway. To have missed the Players Championship Finals for the second year in a row, that's a pain."

In the current year, these successes are particularly important for Hempel, as he has a lot of prize money to defend and could lose his Tour Card if he has another bad year. A point he is well aware of.

"I'm number 50 in the world now and currently I have to look down in the Tour Card race because my first year was good, my second year was bad.

"That means I have to defend the first year now. I have to bring a good game to the board, I know that and I will. In the end I would say keep top 64, that's the absolute minimum goal."

To ensure that this goal is not just a pipe dream for the Cologne native, he has changed a few things in his training: "A bit more back to the basics. I trained more intensively again - it's not by chance that you can't call up your performance."

"I've been putting in more and more time over the year, trying to remember the old training days, repeating a lot of things from back then. In darts now it's not like overnight I'm back to top level. It is simply a development. Also in my own game and I just played that again in the Super League and the World Championship."

Hempel realised that a change in training was more than in order by analysing his game. "The scoring wasn't like that anymore, I couldn't use my first dart like I used to."

"When the first dart comes I can use it well, can show a good game and that just worked against Keegan Brown (at the 2023 World Darts Championship, ed.).

With seven 180s in one match, that's a pretty good score. Also on the Pro Tour I was able to play more 180s towards the end. That means I also focused more on the dart behaviour in the board again."

Checkouts are also a part of the training. "If you lost the throw at some point, where everything fitted together, you have to try step by step to get it together again. As of today, I would say I'm getting very close to my old form from 2021 again."

First and foremost, Hempel practices alone. But taking part in tournaments in his region is also part of his training. "I just go out to the pub in the evening and train a bit with the others. I also let external influences play a role. These are all factors that I have neglected a lot in the course of the last year. That was not good."

"To train the right competition, in my opinion you can really only do that in competition. So in real competition, when I go to a tournament where it's about prize money, where it's about prestige. It doesn't have to be a PDC tournament, it can be an open tournament as well," he concludes.