Still chasing his first win in this season’s Premier League Darts after quarter-final exits on Nights 1 and 2, Rock faces former world champion Luke Humphries on Night 3 in Glasgow. The 24-year-old reckons he’s solved the issue that plagued him against Van Geren after the soap on offer in Antwerp appeared to cost him his grip.
Rock now brings chalk and wax to events in order to help ensure he is prepared for another bathroom setback.
“I went to the toilet just before I went on stage, and obviously you wash your hands after going to the toilet, so I put the soap all over my hands, and the next minute I’m up there, and I was like, ‘This isn’t going to go well’,” Rock said of his disaster in Belgium.
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“I just could not feel it at all. So now we’ve got a plan B, I’ve got a bit of chalk and wax in the case from now on.
“I didn’t have to use it this week at the Players Championship, it was fine, but it must have been the soap I used.
“That was the first time it’s happened. That was definitely the first time.
“It must be just whatever soap was in the toilet at Antwerp that I used and it just obviously took all the oils out of my finger and lost all grip.”
After recognising the problem, Rock is not concerned by a repeat of the scenes that saw him slump to a worrying 79.34 average.
“I actually laughed at it straight away because I knew what the problem was,” the world No.9 said.
“If I played like that and didn’t know what the problem was, then, obviously, we have an issue. But I knew I couldn’t grip my hands and no matter how much I was trying to lick my fingers, rub my finger up and down a barrel to get my fingers rough, it wasn’t working, so I just let that one go.”