"I've cried on the Tour a couple of times this year" - Scott Williams speaks candidly on dartitis troubles

Scott Williams has been a shadow of himself on the oche in recent times. The prominent showman has disappeared from the big stage with his recent dartitis problems now threatening his spot on the PDC Tour all together. When speaking to Oche180, the 36-year-old openly spoke about the emotional turmoil he has been through this year.

From the beginning of the interview, 'Shaggy' had a positive demeanour. "It's going all right. Things are certainly looking up, that's for sure," he said.

He has been doing a lot with Target lately, and has been enjoying the experience of being with them. "Darts is getting so big. Places like this with dartboards, and the fact that they're bringing their Target equipment into places as big as this, with football facilities and padel facilities and, you know, bringing it all together, just shows how big the game's getting."

While originally not a huge darts fan at the beginning, everything seemed to work out well. "Never a fan. I never watched darts properly," he admitted. "I watched Lakeside because it was at Christmas and never had Sky TV, so it was on BBC every fourth of January. But other than that, no. My parents played quite a lot. It didn't really interest me, really. I played pool. Pool was my pub game. And yeah, just working, and then someone asked if I could help them out, and then it started from there, really. And I kind of got the bug and just took it step by step, and now here I am."

Back at the 2024 PDC World Darts Championship, Williams set the world alight with some brilliant performances which resulted in him reaching the semi-finals of the event in a huge surprise. Eventual winner Luke Humphries secured a whitewash win to end Williams dreams of glory but nevertheless it was a brilliant few weeks that got his name on the darting map.

"I remember every single thing," he said. "I remember the scores, I remember the players, I remember probably the days, if I think back that much."

Up there with winning a PDC ranking title, Williams marveled as he reminisced on those glorious times. "It's one of those things, especially in my career. It's not a long career that I've had so far, but it's by far the most memorable, other than winning a Pro Tour, which was great at the time, but it seems to be more common now that Challenge Tour players are getting that good with Pro Tours. The semi-final, any time on the Ally Pally stage, I remember everything, but that specifically was awesome."

That match against Michael van Gerwen was the biggest surprise in the quarter-finals. One of the pre-tournament favourites, Williams noticed something in the practice room out of the corner of his eye that got his hopes up.

"Mainly it's in the practice room before you go on the stage. So not the practice room everyone goes down in, all the lounges and stuff like that, the practice room where it's literally just you and the other player," he explained.

"I'm not often one for watching the other players and seeing how they're getting on, but I was sat there kind of watching the game previous to me, and I was thinking, you know what, I'm watching Michael in the corner of my eye going, "Something's not right. He's dropping below the treble a lot." And I'm like, if I could just keep him in that treble like I do, and hit my doubles at the right time, I could take this. And yeah, I did. And the rest is history."

Williams has added his name to a long list of darters who have tried to get themselves healthier away from the oche with many taking huge life changes to get themselves in better shape. Williams explained his thinking behind the journey of his own.

"It's been one of those things that has happened, and it happens to a lot of players and you'll see it around the Tour, where a lot of people come on the Tour and they put the timber on," he stated. "All of a sudden they put the extra size in their shirts, and that's happened over the last couple of shirts I've had.

"I've gone from XL to 2XL to 3XL. Yes, the sizing of the shirt is slightly different as well, but I was like, 'I don't want this.' So I felt like, to last longer in it, I had to cut stuff out and have a bit of a health kick, a diet, drinking less, eating better, and just trying to be a better self."

Admittedly, it was tough for the players. "It can be tough, but a lot of the places you go to now, a lot of the cities, towns, they have places like Nando's and stuff that are open until 10, 11 o'clock at night."

Emotions can take their toll. "It's after a long day, whether you've done well or bad, or you want to treat yourself, or you're so angry with yourself, you're just going to eat crap. If you can stop doing that, and that's what I've done. I hardly ever snack, I hardly ever have takeaway."

Williams fall down the rankings has been partly due to dartitis, and now he is confident enough to come out and speak about it. "It was tough to start with because obviously you don't want to admit that you've got it. You just feel like something's going wrong," he commented.

"There was a lot going on in my personal life in there. I had a dart shop, and I started to coach as well, which was going great, but then what I did is I put all my effort and time into that, which then my game went downwards, and then I was financially looking after the shop with my own money, not an investor's money or someone else's. So I got under so much pressure, but it was hard and really tough."

There has been some really tough moments on the PDC Tour this year. "The UK Open was one of the toughest ones this year. I played Ben Robb in Nottingham, and I was 4-1 up, I think, and then all of a sudden I got so uncomfortable up there that I couldn't physically release the dart, and watch it back."

The raw emotions have even been let out. "I've cried on the Tour a couple of times this year. I've won the games as well. I've cried. I beat Tyler Thorpe 6-4. I hit five bullseye checkouts. Not one way you would think I'm going to bullseye, but I did because in my head that's how it worked, and I cried. I went back to my manager and my wife were there, and I was like, 'I don't know why, I don't know why.'"

He is getting back up to speed, but it could be too late. "But as you've seen recently, a couple of nine-darters in a couple of events, throws much better, change of equipment over the last six weeks, eight weeks. It's all coming back together, but potentially the first six months of the year is going to cost me massively. If that's the way it is, that's the way it is. Unfortunately, it's the darts, it's my life, and I'll get on with it, and I'll go do the next thing I need to do to get back to the top."

He has had support from some players. "Nathan [Aspinall] called me in Leicester a couple of months ago about it, just kind of when I was coming out of it, but at the same time, he could still see I was being affected by it. So it's not one of the things you want to bring up a lot to players, because they have it."

Way off the pace to qualify for the Players Championship Finals and PDC World Darts Championship, Williams currently sits 64th in the Tour Card race and is in a lot of danger of losing his place on the tour, something that looked certified just a couple of years ago.

Nevertheless, he will continue to plough on. "But it's just as it is now. We've still got eight events, a couple of European events, Grand Slam to qualify for. I've still got plenty of the year to go. I just need to find that game. The non-doubters need to go to wins, not little pin badges."