KEVIN PAINTER believes that his experience from the McCoy's Premier League Darts will benefit him during the Betfair World Matchplay, which begins in Blackpool on Saturday.
The Players Championship Finals winner was one of the eight stars of this year's Premier League - where he competed in front of huge crowds for three months in arenas across the UK and Ireland.
Painter will take the the Winter Gardens stage in Blackpool on Sunday night to face Steve Beaton, and feels that his big-game experience will be vital in the contest.
"When you're playing in front of 8,000 or 9,000 people, over time that experience must come through," said Painter.
"James Hubbard has played at The O2 in the World Youth Championship final, but this is a bit more intense with the crowd on top of you in Blackpool and it's going to be a whole new experience for him.
"The Premier League players have seen this a lot so we're quite used to it, and hopefully being in the Premier League will show.
"When you're behind and in trouble, you look to pull things out of the bag. When I got to the quarter-finals in Blackpool two years ago I was 4-1 down against both Colin Lloyd and Mark Walsh and managed to win those games.
"That was all down to experience and hopefully the Premier League has given me a bit more of that."
Painter, though, admits that his Premier League experience has also affected his form away from the big stage and that he struggled to adapt to events on the PDC ProTour following the high of being cheered by thousands of fans only days earlier.
"To be honest, I've found a lot of the tournaments hard to get excited about after the Premier League," he revealed. "I was in that for the first time and I was so excited to be in it - I was loving it and everything else since hasn't been the same.
"I know I've got to get back to the bread and butter of the tournaments, but I've found it hard since the Premier League. I wouldn't say I'm on any sort of great form as far as the floor tournaments go and I didn't have a very good UK Open.
"It's been a little bit quieter in the last two weeks and I've had a good practice and I feel like I'm ready to give it a good go, and I'm throwing quite well.
"I've had plenty of rest too, I've been practising nicely and having my moments. I'm back on the go and hopefully I'll do well."
Painter has reached the quarter-finals only once in 11 previous appearances in the Betfair World Matchplay, and he suffered an agonising 14-12 defeat to Adrian Lewis last year after wiring three match darts at double top in a dramatic contest.
"Whether you play well at Blackpool or not, it's a great venue," says Painter. "I've never had much going on up there myself over the years - I've made one quarter-final and that's it but I've generally played well there and got beaten.
"Last year I should have beaten Adrian Lewis but I let him off the hook and he ended up in the semis.
"It's getting tougher every year though, and the field this year is the hardest field we've ever seen.
"Normally when you're waiting for the draw to come out, you're thinking there are four or five players who it wouldn't be too bad to play, but this year everybody was looking and knowing that you'd have a hard game anyway."
Painter drew former World Champion Beaton in this year's first round - with their only previous clash in a major tournament having been in the 2004 UK Open quarter-finals when they played on stage two in Bolton.
"It's strange that we've never played on TV before because we could probably have met on 50 other occasions over the years," he said.
"Some players you seem to play all the time and you can't get away from. Gary Anderson's only been over in the PDC three years or so and I've played him loads of times on TV. I went through a phase of playing Ronnie Baxter all the time, and when I was number seven in the world Phil Taylor was the number two, and when he went to number one I dropped to eight and we couldn't get away from each other for a time!
"Some people you bump into all the time, and others you don't seem to play, and Steve's one of them.
"We're good friends and we go back a long way and it's probably a draw that the pair of us would have rather avoided.
"I like to see him do well in tournaments and I'm pretty sure he'd like to see me do well, but once we get up there we're going to treat each other as enemies."
The Betfair World Matchplay will be held from July 21-29 at the Winter Gardens in Blackpool. Tickets for the event are still available by calling the Winter Gardens Box Office on 0844 856 1111 or by visiting www.blackpoollive.com.
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