Brett Claydon gets better of world number one Luke Humphries during Players Championship event

As far as confidence boosters go, they do not get much bigger than defeating the world number one.

By his own admission, Brett Claydon went into last week’s two Players Championships events searching for a combination of form and confidence.

The long hours spent on the practice board were not having the desired impact, so he instead adopted a less is more approach.

And it paid dividends for the 42-year-old, who subsequently racked up one of the biggest victories of his career when he defeated seven-time major winner and currently the globe’s top-ranked player Luke Humphries 6-5.

“I’d probably been doing too much practice so I decided to ease up,” said Claydon, who has previously played football for Newmarket Town and Soham Town Rangers.

“I practiced less, found a better balance and obviously it worked.

“I’d been overthinking things and to try to put it right I was spending more and more time on the board.

“I was having really good legs and then all of a sudden I couldn’t find the treble.

“That lack of consistency was costing me, so I decided to go a different way.

“When you play somebody like Luke there’s obviously no expectation – all of the pressure is on him.

“I just went out there to enjoy it and put the pressure on him if and when the chance came.

“It’s an amazing feeling to beat a player of his quality. Like Luke Littler, Luke Humphries has done so much for the sport.

“Getting a win that big makes all of the hard work and all of the travelling worthwhile.”

For good measure, Soham-based Claydon followed his triumph over Humphries up 24 hours later by recording a 6-4 win over world number 19 Dimitri Van den Bergh, who has two major titles to his name.

Claydon is set to return to action in the middle of May at an event in Germany.