Jonny Clayton has revealed he almost quit darts after the death of his father last year, admitting: “I’d lost everything, I couldn’t be bothered.”. The ‘Ferret’ pulled out of a late nosedive to pip Daryl Gurney 4-3 and reach the last 16 of the Paddy Power PDC World Championship. But the popular former plasterer from Pontyberem admitted he was close to packing up his arrows and returning to sweet home alabaster when his father, John, died suddenly in July 2023 – and his form on the oche slumped.
He said: “It was over, I won’t lie to you. I had no interest, I didn’t want to play the game, I didn’t want to travel. It meant nothing to me. Darts is my hobby. For some of these youngsters it’s their job but this has always been my hobby. “When I lost my dad – and I don’t want to keep going on about it as it is old news – it hurt. He was my inspiration to keep playing. I said, ‘That is it - I don’t want to do it any more.’.
“The guys were flying to Australia or New Zealand for the World Series and I lost my dad on the morning of that flight. At that time, the guys were away for three weeks and being at home gave me too much time to think. “I had lost everything. That was it. I thought, I cannot be bothered. And at the beginning of this year, I was rubbish, I could not put anything together. But when you have a family looking up at you, and friends that believe in you, it means a lot, so I said I would give it a chance. You are playing a hobby you are good at - give it another go. That is what I am trying to do.
