Gerwyn Price: ‘Having a break made me fall in love with darts again’
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Welshman has had a poor year but says he has refound his spark with the world championship about to start. Gerwyn Price is giving a tour of his man cave. Built last year in the basement of his home in Markham, Caerphilly, it features a championship size snooker table, a pool table, armchairs upholstered from his former darts shirts, its own kitchen and bar, and a cinema room with starlit planetarium ceiling. “It’s a good place to get away when I need an hour to myself,” he says. “Probably play snooker more than darts. Which might be the problem!”.
![[Jonathan Liew]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2019/11/25/Jonathan_Liew.png?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Highest break? “On that table? I’ve had a 96. Highest ever, 108. I won’t do a Shaun Murphy and lie about having a 147!” Price cackles, referencing the snooker player’s unverified and much ridiculed claim to have once hit a nine-dart finish in the pub.
![[Gerwyn Price shows his passion during this match against Connor Scutt at last year’s world championship.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ffcf6442b5494808e5d253dad0d5f803ee30894f/0_152_5799_3478/master/5799.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Price is on good form today. To be brutally honest, these days you are never quite sure what Price you are going to encounter: belligerent, doleful, testy, tired, provocative, wisecracking, withdrawn. For much of the past year he has been a ghost of himself, on and off the oche; passive on the stage, wayward on the board, occasionally dropping vague hints that he is scarcely fussed either way. But, on the eve of his return to the world championship, there is a different energy to Price. There’s a spark and a spikiness. “I’m back,” he says. “I’m more confident than ever going into the world championship. Probably more confident than when I won in 2021.”.
Huge if true. Particularly given the way 2024 has gone for him, a bad dream unfolding in slow motion, a poor Premier League followed by a poor everything else. He didn’t get past the last 16 of any major. He failed to qualify for the Grand Slam, a tournament he has won three times in the past six years. On this year’s ranking money, Price is No 31 in the world. “I usually find another gear in June, July,” he says. “But for some reason that just never happened.”.
