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.
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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