Veenstra wants to continue combining work with darts career: "It provides structure"

Richard Veenstra, aged 41, has captured a PDC Tour Card for the first time in his career. The Dutchman was previously active mainly with the BDO and WDF.

Veenstra captured his Tour Card for the next two years at Q-School in mid-January. "This is what you do it for. You always want to compare yourself with the best," Veenstra told AD.nl.

'Flyers' first played football, but tore both his cruciate ligaments at the age of 25. "Then I just started playing more darts. And that went from a bit of a hobby, to now professional with the PDC.''

Veenstra currently still works in the purchasing department of a luxury aircraft manufacturing company. Whether he can't make a living from his sport yet? "Haha, no at the moment not yet. For that you have to get to the top-32 of the PDC anyway, then it really starts to be fun. But I have to get there first. My goal is to get to the top 64 within two years."

"I'm having a super good time at work," Veenstra continued. "It is also easy to combine because I get the space for darts. For the time being, I want to keep doing it that way, you do have a bit of structure. But I do have to train a lot. I now have that Tour Card for the PDC for two years, so that will be a lot of work, but we'll see how it goes.''

Veenstra has been a semi-finalist at the BDO and WDF World Championships in the past. He therefore dreams of Alexandra Palace. "Eventually that is the goal, but you have to qualify for that first. If I make it, I hope I will meet the big names later, I don't need to do that in the first round. But first I'm just going to play nice, try to make it to the World Championship, and then we'll see where it ends.''