WATTIMENA ADMITS RAPID WEIGHT LOSS ALMOST ENDED CAREER
06/08/2025 By Aaron Nijjar
JERMAINE WATTIMENA admits he came close to losing his Tour Card after shedding too much weight.
World No. 26 Wattimena secured a maiden PDC senior title after beating Lukas Wenig 8-5 to win the Players Championship 23 last week.
‘The Machine Gun’ lost all SIX of his previous ranking finals but finally managed to get his hands on a win in Hildesheim.
But Wattimena says a slump in form a couple of years ago nearly ended his career and believes his game only returned when the pounds came back on.
He said: “It lasted about two and a half years.
“I’m just grateful I had enough ranking buffer to avoid losing my Tour Card—that was my bit of luck.
“At the time, I’d lost a lot of weight, and quite rapidly too.
“But on the ProTour, you start noticing irregularities in your body—especially with all the travel—and then the weight creeps back.
“Once I started putting the weight back on, suddenly the darts were flying straight again.”
The 37-year-old reached just four ProTour quarter-finals between 2022 and 2023.
Dutch thrower Wattimena bounced back in brilliant fashion and finished runner-up at the European Championship in 2024.
Wattimena revealed he was overjoyed to break through the bad patch and claim his first piece of silverware this year.
He added: “A massive weight fell off my shoulders.
“It took a long time—ten and a half years.”
Image by Taylor Lanning.
