Mike De Decker on his progress since Grand Prix win and his expectations for the remainder of the calendar

Local TV Sport

A chat with Belgian Mike De Decker who comments on his progress since becoming a major winner at the 2024 World Grand Prix, his expectations for the remainder of the year and how he approaches games at the top level.

Transcript

00:00It's quite weird really when you say that practice doesn't go well, but on stage you produce it

00:04Yeah, you just said up there that you want to bring your floor game to the stages

00:08It's quite weird how that works and can you explain why?

00:12No idea. I have no idea

00:15the first

00:17I'm always three four hours up front

00:20to practice

00:22and the first hour I couldn't miss a thing and then all of a sudden I started missing and

00:27and

00:29Didn't hit anything like I did the first hour

00:33And then I got on stage and I don't know

00:36Something clicked and and it's been going on for a couple of weeks now

00:40The Grand Prix first and Prague on the European tour and now again this weekend

00:47You tell me I don't know

00:48Have you ever thought about maybe changing that regime to maybe practice not as long you said you got there four hours before maybe

00:55To try no because it's working

00:58I'm not gonna change anything that works. So no, I'll be coming in three four hours up front anyway

01:04Into this tournament. There's a lot of talk about Michael Smith

01:06He's defending the prize money from here two years ago a lot of pressure on him

01:11They feel like number one was you aware of that and two?

01:14Do you feel like that may have played on his mind in this straight shootout match?

01:17Well, maybe but I'm not looking at other players. I'm just looking at what I can do and how I play

01:24so

01:26Probably it it was on his mind, but not on mine. So

01:31Thank you, Mike Luke Littler next

01:34Obviously the format gets a bit longer as well

01:36How do you sort of approach that game knowing how well you're both playing at the moment? Well the same as any other game

01:43Like I said, I'll be practicing three four hours up front

01:49Yeah, it's gonna be a good game

01:51Do you sort of enjoy causing an upset sometimes, you know being that obviously, you know, you've won that major now

01:57But maybe just knocking out some of the bigger players. Does that make you feel a bit better about your game?

02:03To be really honest, I've been doing that for the last two years on the on the Pro Tour and the floor tournaments

02:09So now finally, I'm bringing it on stage. So

02:13I'm enjoying it, of course because everyone enjoy winning

02:17Well it to me it's not a surprise

02:20And then you see if you do take Luke Littler out of the competition

02:23How would you sort of go about that then because you know that the format continues again

02:28You know less big players in there, you know, you could be looking at coming away with another title

02:35Like I said before I'm not looking at another title. I'm looking at

02:39this tournament game by game and and hopefully I win against Luke, but Luke has been phenomenal since the world's last year and

02:47I'll see

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