Jansen impresses in debut year at PDC: "But actually I was going for a football career"

Danny Jansen won his first PDC Tour card earlier this year. The 20-year-old Dutchman has now climbed to 77th place in the world rankings.

Jansen is currently making a name for himself as a dart player, but perhaps a football career was in store for him. "I was scouted by FC Twente and was very proud. But then it all went wrong. At the Easter bonfire in the village, I was playing with other children. Because it was dark, I didn't see that there was a tractor there. I jumped over a ditch and got stuck in the scissors of the tractor with my leg and fell over with my body. My lower leg was shattered,' Jansen told AD.nl.

At the age of nine, he had to undergo eleven operations and was in a wheelchair for more than a year. Playing football was out of the question, but Jansen shifted his focus to another sport. His father played darts at premier league level, and Danny soon got the hang of it. "Fortunately, my broken leg is not my supporting leg, so there is hardly any strain on it," he says.

Read also

Jansen on opening PDC ranking account at Players Championship 9: "I love to play here with the big names, now I feel I belong"

Joke from friends

Because of his brilliant head of hair, Jansen soon got the nickname The Mullet. At the beginning of April, he also won the ninth Players Championship of the year, his first ranking title with the PDC. During the Dutch Darts Championship in Zwolle last weekend, it became clear that the Dutchman is also supported by a large group of friends. They had a joke up their sleeves; during his walk on they held up a sign saying: 'We don't give up'. "When Danny won that tournament, he had to give an interview in English and he is not very good at that," says one of the friends. When asked what his greatest strength is, he said that he never gives up. But he didn't have all the words in the right place, haha. We still remind him of this regularly. It has become a kind of motto now. Beautiful, isn't it?