Joey Ten Berge – INTRODUCTION
Born and raised in The Hague (Netherlands) on 18 October 1985
As a young lad Joey was introduced to the dartsport, mainly because of his father and the popularity of darts in the Netherlands because of Raymond van Barneveld’s performances and world title in the Nineties.
Joey, also a very talented footballer in his youth only wanted one thing, make it to the top in darts. Soon enough it became clear that he had an undeniable talent for darts and at the age of 15, on his debut, he won his first major title: European Youth Champion. After this Joey experienced a whirlwind of success with many titles added to his name like the French Open, Danish Open and Holland Open. His performance within the Dutch National Ranking tournaments did not go unnoticed either.
In 2007 Joey became part of the Dutch National team and again in his debut won his first World Championship title (doubles) with Mario Robbe and won the overall World Championship team event with the Dutch team. He repeated this performance in 2009 in which he also became runner up in the World Championship Singles in the USA.
2008 saw Joey win his first Dutch National ranking title and made his Lakeside debut in January 2009. Despite already having an impressive career as a dart player it became apparent to Joey that it was very difficult to become a fulltime professional dart player and earn a decent living from this to support himself. To ensure financial stability he decided to start a small business (sole trader) as a painter/decorator. This was hard work and most of his time was spent to make this work for him and it became very difficult for him to combine his work with travelling all over the world as a dart player. In the years that followed, despite the difficulties he still managed to put in some excellent results when he did attend tournaments. in 2013 Joey decided to take a break from darts because without the help from others (sponsors, investors) it was near impossible to combine a work life and playing darts at the highest level.
In 2014 Joey was given the opportunity to make a move from the DO to the PDC and attempt to win a Pro Tour card for two years through the PDC Qualifying school. Despite not having played any darts in 2013 Joey managed to Qualify for the Pro Tour and is now determined with the help of his friend and manager Marc Vos to breath new life into his darting career within the PDC.