Devon Petersen has discussed last month's World Matchplay and PDC Summer Series at length during a recent interview with DartsNews and said that the wide-open nature of the tournaments, it showed massively who put the time in during lockdown.

"It highlighted a lot of things we take for granted. In a sense that the top players generally play all the time so they always testing their confidence but now because of the Summer Series, they didn't have the running start they have coming into tournaments," said Petersen to DartsNews.

"I think it showed a lot as a level playing field and players that didn't prepare well for the World Matchplay or Summer Series got found out.

There's a whole host of things with the likes of Gary Anderson playing in the final and you could see his first dart was dropping low so that means there was a timing issue. If he didn't practice a lot, those things can slip into your game without you being able to see it and then rectify it. As in a tournament it is very hard to rectify something like that as that takes practice."

"You saw the players that actually put the time in and performed really well and consistently over the tournament like Dimitri did."

World Matchplay win for Van den Bergh and Premier League aspirations

Working on the Sky Sports coverage, Petersen spoke also about Dimitri van den Bergh's shock win at the World Matchplay and said that there will be pressure now on him but due to his love of stage play, he could live up to it especially in the Premier League.

"He said in one of his interviews that he's more focused when he's playing on stage because of the timing because he can prepare for that where as on the floor it's different. The one thing that stood out for me was Dimitri's finishing and his composure on that finishing. He surely worked on it," he continued.

"You can see Dimitri enjoys playing on stage, you'd imagine that more exposure to stage events would get him up the rankings a lot quicker. Will the pressure of being a champion affect him? That remains to be seen because obviously after this you are expected to win before you come into a tournament like this."

"We've seen it in Rob Cross, you're expected to win and if you don't perform, does that pressure then crumble him, does he wilt under the pressure. It's a new level of expectation on Dimitri."

"I'm sure that if he gets included in the Premier League, can he perform well? I'd be silly to say no because he's proven he plays well on stage."