Klaasen taking pragmatic view to potential Q-School tilt: "I'm just counting on my talent and my abilities to play well"

Flash back to March 2020 as Coronavirus first started to become known and for Jelle Klaasen, he reached the Quarter-Finals of the UK Open before the world then shut down.

Klaasen caught up with The Weekly Dartscast to discuss that and the aftermath of it in terms of how he prepared going forward.

"At that time I felt great, I thought it was going to be an amazing year. But everything went different from that moment," said Klaasen to the Weekly Dartscast.

"The first couple of weeks, I didn't practice at all. As there was no telling when we were going to start."

In terms of travelling, with the PDC tour based mostly in the UK, Klaasen like many European based players had to go through the ordeal of the usual travelling and testing which raised a smile when it came to the recent set of Super Series in Niedernhausen.

"We're used to travelling so it wasn't that big of a problem. Only you have to do the Covid test and then you're allowed to travel and then you had to do the Covid test when you arrived. The testing was more of an issue. To see that all the English were complaining when they had to travel to Germany and they thought it was a big risk and it was a lot trouble. All the European players were thinking we do that every tournament for years."

'The Cobra' didn't qualify for the World Championship for the first time since 2013 last time around losing in the qualifier for Niels Zonneveld which of course was a huge disappointment.

"For me if I have to play qualifiers for the World's, it's a big disappointment because I think I should always be one of the seeded players in my opinion. I didn't get the results, missing a lot of match darts, people playing great against me.

"Finishing was terrible, even in the qualifiers. I lost against Niels Zonneveld, I missed so many doubles. I should have won that game pretty easy but if you don't hit your doubles, you'll never win."

"As a professional darts player, if you don't qualify for the world's, I think that's the biggest disappointment. If you play normal the whole year, you should qualify."

For Klaasen, he admitted that the lack of local tournaments has affected his game especially when Super Series cannot be counted on.

"I'm only getting better and better. I think the biggest issue for me is that normally before Covid, the best practice was small local tournaments just to get the confidence because normally you win those tournaments pretty easy. That was my biggest practice of the week, now practicing all alone, it's difficult to get that pressure in a game."

"I can't wait to get that confidence back. If you have a Super Series and then you have to wait a month and a half doing nothing, that's not good for your rhythm."

He currently sits 58th in the Order of Merit with a potential Q-School stint on the cards but he is taking a pragmatic approach to the situation.

"To be completely honest, I don't really think about it. I'm just counting on my talent and my abilities to play well. If I have to go to Q-School, I think I'm good enough to qualify, I wouldn't be panicking."