Former BDO World Champion Stephen Bunting has experienced a career resurgence thanks to heavier darts and hypnotherapy. He overcame depression and self-doubt to win his first PDC TV title in 2024.
Stephen Bunting is a former world champion who has become a cult hero thanks to hypnotherapy and heavier darts. A strange illness has afflicted darts fans in recent years. Symptoms include: obsessively watching TikTok clips of a 39-year-old Scouser completing inane tasks and mouthing iconic film quotes. Belting David Guetta and Sia’s 2011 hit 'Titanium', they call it going “Bunting Mental”, and it is catching.
Stephen Bunting’s popularity in darts – certainly among the British contingent – is probably only superseded by his personality. Once a relative prodigy in his own right after winning the British Teenage Open and World Youth Masters at 15, Bunting’s career has been a slow burn. He did not make it past the first round of the BDO World Championship – effectively the sport’s second, lower quality world event – until 2010, but then won it in 2014, before joining the PDC.The past decade has been one of gradual improvement, of frustration and stagnation, of reaching major semi-finals but not taking the last step. He finally broke that duck in February 2024, beating Michael van Gerwen in Milton Keynes to win his first TV title. Bunting credits two things with that win: using heavier darts – going from his famously light 12g to 18g – and hypnotherapy. “I was ready for walking away,” he said after lifting the trophy. “It was awful, I was walking into events and I felt like everyone was laughing at me. “I felt like no matter what I was doing everything was going wrong. I was taking it out on my family and locking myself away. I was depressed, it was an awful place to be. “Thankfully the psychologist and hypnotist over the last few years have helped. He taught me how to think not just about darts, there’s other things than darts, your family, your home life. “I know they say in Peter Pan you think about happy stuff and you can fly but it is the same sort of logic in darts. If you turn up and are feeling happy and good then you can win anythin
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