"That whole fighter mentality was gone, I never had that before" - Vincent van der Voort on the reason for his sabbatical year

Vincent van der Voort, who lost his PDC Tour Card late last year, was in action last weekend with his son Kevin in the pairs tournament at the Dutch Open Darts. But what about the ambition to return immediately to the top of the darts world?

Van der Voort has his own dart shop in Zaanstad and occasionally throws darts there as well. "Here it's all fine, it doesn't matter. But as soon as I had to focus on a tournament somewhere in England or Germany or something just happened, I would wander off. Then after two and a half legs I'd think: it's not going that way today. Nah, gosh, not today then. I've downloaded a series, I'll just spend an afternoon watching a series in my hotel room. That whole fighter mentality was gone. I never had that before. Even when I lost, I felt sorry for myself after an afternoon of being negative. That doesn't make sense either. But then you know it's time to take a step back," Van der Voort said to De Telegraaf.

"Participating in the Dutch Open, for the first time together with Kevin, I do like it," Van der Voort continued. "This is one of those tournaments with a marquee with those long tables and at one point you see one after the other sliding across it, right into a clicker." Grinning, "Crazy. It used to be that the whole world's top players participated, Phil Taylor walked around. And it's a best-of-5, lol. It could be over in no time."

Son Kevin watched his father slowly slip away. "At first you don't realize it, but suddenly he went from performing consistently for 20 years to really not good enough anymore. That was weird. I'm sorry he had to quit for himself forced, but it's for the best. Then a minute after a match he would app, "Nice to go home. Neither of us are really talkers, but we understand each other."

Van der Voort has had a particularly tough time, losing his sister after a year and a half of illness. "How my private life has cut into it, I underestimated that," says Van der Voort. I thought I would park it during tournaments. But then I got another app that my sister was doing worse. When I was at Holland-France at the European Football Championship in Germany, I got a call that it could be her last night. Then at three in the morning I was at my sister's bedside in the hospital in Almere. We had a last conversation, there she said some more things....

"I have plenty of distractions during the day, but as soon as my head hits that pillow, the thoughts of that come flooding back," Van der Voort continued. "Darts - and everything around it - became a struggle. Around the last World Darts Championship it was enormously busy, but I actually pushed back the processing with that. That's only really going to come now. Maybe I'll get the sense back in a couple of months, but maybe after more than 30 years it's also a good thing."

Van der Voort has long been known as someone with his own opinion, and that has dared clash with the PDC bosses before. "I was really an odd man out. I knew where my ceiling was, physically and mentally. A plate for my head, that's what I would have liked. There are so many players who are convinced that they will become world champion, but don't have the qualities. I'm not like that. I could stand in front of the mirror every morning and say to myself: it's you, you're going to make it today. But then I have to laugh. Nobody believes that, do they? You have to feel it, experience it. You still have that when you are young, when there are no scars on it yet."

Finally, son Kevin looks back on his father's career. "What I thought was the best moment? I think when he reached the quarterfinals of the World Chanpionship against Simon Whitlock, in 2011. Then we (with mother Karin, ed.) suddenly stood in front of him in the hotel lobby, that was really a beautiful moment. When we were there, it was always as if he himself was more enthusiastic. That did something to me, when that came up." Vincent: "He used to say, 'Lose, then come home quickly.' Then he became even more fanatical than I was. Then you realize you're not doing it all for yourself."