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Adrian Lewis has broken cover to reveal the burnout behind his shock decision to step away from the oche, saying his career was going “stale” and admitting: “The buzz wasn't there.”
Two-time world champion Lewis, 38, rocked the circuit in April when he announced he was taking an indefinite break from competing on the Professional Darts Circuit. Jaded 'Jackpot', who famously earned his nickname from a big win on a slot machine in Las Vegas, has not set any date on making a comeback.
But he looks fitter after shedding nearly 4st by walking up to 10 miles a day around a golf course near his Cheshire home, and he insisted: “I'm not finished – there's another chapter to be written.”
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Lewis won back-to-back PDC world titles at Alexandra Palace in 2011 and 2012, but he has not win a TV major since the UK Open nine years ago – and he admits the stress of trying to stay at the top wore him down. Speaking for the first time about his break, at an event for Target Darts, he said: “Why am I taking a break? I think after 20 years of doing it, I think I just needed freshening up a bit.
“I was getting a bit stale. The buzz wasn’t there. My wife hasn’t been very well, so I have been in hospital with her a lot of the time. You could call it burnout but, for me, it had been going on for a while. My mind wasn’t at the darts.
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“I still won a tournament last season. I was still going deep into tournaments and I qualified for all the TV events, so it wasn’t really about my form. It was just that I didn’t want to be there.
“My mind wasn’t there, and I didn’t think it was fair if I kept turning up when someone else could have had my spot – someone who could have given 100 per cent. The truth is, I wasn’t giving 100%. My mind was elsewhere.”
Lewis, who is now down to No.40 in the PDC order of merit, claims there was no tipping point which prompted him to jump off the hamster wheel, saying: “It wasn’t like a rash decision where I decided to walk away on the spur of the moment.
“I had been talking to my wife about it. She just said, 'Basically you have got to do what you have got to do. No-one can tell you but yourself.' I just replied, 'Well that’s it then – I am taking a break.'
“It has just taken a bit of pressure off really. I feel like I’m a bit more like myself again, a bit more bubbly instead of being down in the dumps all the time.
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“When I won my first world title, I was sometimes on the board 15 hours a day. I was literally on it from dawn till dusk. I used to have people in on shifts (as practice partners), four or five hours at a time. It was relentless.
“I won it and then I thought all the hard work had paid off had paid off because of all the effort I had put in. But let's get real: You are never happy. OK, so you have won a world title, and then a second, but you always want more.”
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