Kevin Painter sprak met trots over zijn carrière nadat hij aankondigde te stoppen met professioneel darts. Hiermee komt een periode van bijna 30 jaar in de sport tot een eind.
Painter brak door aan het begin van de jaren '90 en stond voor het eerst op een PDC-podium op de World Grand Prix van 2000 voordat hij zich in het jaar daarna aansloot bij de PDC.
Hij haalde de WK-finale van 2004 en speelde daar tegen Phil Taylor. De wedstrijd staat erom bekend dat Taylor won in een beslissende leg. Painter pakte zijn eerste TV-titel op de Players Championship Finals van 2011.
Painter speelde in de Premier League in 2012, maar verloor zijn Tour Card aan het eind van 2018. Hij speelde in 2019 en 2020 op de PDC Challenge Tour en nadat zijn poging op het herpakken van een Tour Card op de Q-School van 2021 mislukte, kondigde hij zijn pensioen aan.
PAINTER: "I'm proud - it's 25 years of good memories really. I've been a professional for 25 years now and about 1983-84 was when I first picked up a set of darts, so it's been a long time and it's been great all the way along.
I've enjoyed it. I've been very fortunate to play in some of the things I've played in, go to some of the places I've been and it's been an enjoyable time.
I've been thinking about [retiring] for 18 months or so. I thought that if I didn't get my card at Q School I was going to be really disappointed and it was going to be a bad time for me, but it's not.
It started to go downhill a bit around about 2014, I started to find it harder to enjoy the events.
I only looked forward to going to the TV events, I didn't look forward to going to the floor events, and when you're not enjoying what you're doing, it makes it twice as hard.
You've got to play against these great players, and if mentally you're not right then that's going to be difficult.
I'm not stopping because I'm not good enough. I keep repeating the same mistakes all the time, and over the last three years I've lost too many games that I should have won and had chances to win and messed it up.
If you had to narrow it down to one thing, I can't concentrate as well as I used to over the distance of games.
In a strange way I feel like I've got a weight of expectation off my shoulders from myself. When you're still trying to play and get back on the tour, because I know I've got the ability it's frustrating and every time you turn up you're trying harder and harder. When it's not working, the expectation's still there.
But I feel alright now that I've made the decision not to carry on with it; I'm not packing up darts completely, I enjoy the game but I'm just going to step back from the PDC side of things.
I'm still going to do some competitions and carry on with my exhibition work but I think it's time to step away.
Instead of being disappointed about it, I have to look back at these moments and a lot of it was great."
Painters beste moment in zijn carrière kwam toen hij Mark Webster versloeg om de Players Championship Finals won in december 2011. Hij viel op zijn knieën en pakte zijn eerste TV-titel.
PAINTER: "It was a relief to win one. Once I'd got to 2011 you start to wonder if you have had your best chances of winning a TV major.
I got myself in a good position in that match and thought 'I'm not going to throw this away now because I might not get another chance.'
I got the match out of the way with one dart at a double as soon as it came around - if you mess around, sometimes you don't get another go.
It was relief and the pleasure of doing it. There's going to be thousands of players who won't win a TV major, even more that won't get to a World Championship final.
I've won a TV major, been in a [World Championship] final and played in the Premier League - that's not bad really.
I loved every single minute of that Premier League, it was fantastic. In a way, I was absolutely useless on the ProTour that five months we were on that Premier League [tour] because all I could think about was the Premier League night.
We'd come off that on a Thursday and on Friday you're travelling off to the ProTour. All I was thinking about was the following Thursday night because it was so exciting. I loved it."
Painter was ook een UK Open kampioen en een halve finalist op de Las Vegas Desert Classic. Ook won hij een handvol PDC-rankign titels.
PAINTER: "I think I underachieved in some ways but a lot of that was because [I] clashed with Phil.
Phil was winning everything, and if Phil wasn't about I'm pretty sure that I'd have won a World title for a start, and I might have won several other majors that we played in that Phil took me out in when I was on a good run!
There's plenty of other players could say exactly the same, but I can look back and I've done a lot of decent things that a lot of players would have a hard time nowadays to emulate."
© Foto: Professional Darts Corporation (PDC)