JAMIE CAVEN has revealed the secret motivation behind the greatest weekend of his darts career, after he won a Players Championship double.
The Derby ace had recently dropped out of the world's top 32 after winning past the last 16 of a tournament only twice inside six months in a nightmare run of results.
However, he won back-to-back Players Championship titles in Wigan last weekend - claiming £20,000 in prize money and ensuring that he will qualify for all the year's TV events.
Caven also moved back into the world's top 32, but has revealed that he almost withdrew from playing in Wigan, after wife Debbie was delayed in undergoing an operation for a serious, and long-standing, back problem on Friday.
"If the operation had gone ahead and it didn't go as smoothly as they hope it does, then I'd probably not have gone to Wigan," said Caven.
"Debbie said she wanted me to go anyway, but I don't think my mind would have been right to have played, so when the operation was cancelled at the last minute, she encouraged me to go to Wigan - and I'm glad I did!
"She's the motivator for me. If I'm just pottering around the house she's encouraging me to get onto the practice board, so it's probably fate. I'm a believer that things happen for a reason, and it's turned out well in the end.
"It was nice to be able to ring her on Saturday night, and knowing the pain she's in and the disappointment she had to hear how happy she was.
"I can usually tell when she's in pain, and she sounded completely pain-free because she was so over the moon that I'd won. And on Sunday it was even better - it must have been like an anaesthetic!
"The date's been re-set for mid-June, so I'll get the UK Open in Bolton out of the way and then I've got a bit of a gap between tournaments, so it's a perfect time for all concerned."
He defeated Paul Nicholson and Jelle Klaasen in the respective finals - averaging 110 against the Dutch ace in Sunday's decider, despite it being his 14th game of an unbeaten weekend.
"It has to be the best weekend of my career," he added. "I came close once before in Canada to winning back-to-back tournaments a couple of years ago, where I won an event on the Saturday and lost in the final on the Sunday, but to go through the full weekend unbeaten was amazing.
"I think my worst result over the weekend was 6-4, so nobody had a shot to beat me in any match.
"I was told by the guys doing stats that I had a 106 average in one game against Robert Thornton, 108 against Keegan Brown earlier on and then 110 against Jelle in the final, so the whole weekend was top."
The wins came only a week after Caven had reached the semi-finals of the European Open in Dusseldorf, and he will now head to the Speedy Services UK Open in Bolton full of confidence.
Caven has twice reached the quarter-finals of 'The FA Cup of Darts' and said: "It's certainly made the rest of year easier, although I'm not going to take my foot off the gas.
"At the start of every year, I have certain plans of what I want to achieve and I write my targets down.
"Last year, I failed miserably on most of them, but this year I think I had about 14 or 15 targets and I've got two left to achieve. If I get closer to them then I will set other goals.
"I've had a good run in the UK Open in the last couple of years so it's an event I obviously like, but the fans seem to love it too.
"Because the draw's not done in advance, you can't prepare to face a sepcific player, you just turn up and go for it against whoever you get pulled out to play - you get no time to think about it."
The Wigan wins mean that Caven will be amongst the qualifiers for next month's European Championship and World Matchplay and October's World Grand Prix, and also saw him return to the world's top 32.
"I lost to John Bowles at the World Championship but I felt I played particularly well and it was an amazing match to be involved in, and rather than be negative about it I wanted to use 2013 as the relaunch of my career," he added.
"I think, after losing my dad last year, those six months were probably the worst of my career.
"I've had to put a lot of hard work in and a lot of hours on the practice board. Phil Taylor says it all the time that you have to be dedicated and put the hard work in, and it's true because I've been doing it.
"In these last six months I've been doing that more than ever and it's paying off now."
Tickets for the Speedy Services UK Open are still available through SeeTickets, either online through http://www.seetickets.com/go/ukopen or by calling 0844 871 8807 (UK) or 0044 114 223 9817 (non-UK).