Day two at the Dutch Darts Championship and it was a lot warmer with less logistical issues than on day one!
In the afternoon it was pretty much as filled as on Friday evening, and I noticed there were quite a lot Noppert fans!
The session started with Josh Rock who had a comfortable win over Graham Hall before Dave Chisnall averaged a ton despite back problems in seeing off Martin Lukeman, as Chizzy told me he is looking for a first ever title in The Netherlands!
The best game of the afternoon followed that as the new UK Open Champion Andrew Gilding averaged over 108 to knock-out Ian White!
‘Goldfinger’ told me it was probably his semifinal run in the Dutch Eurotour that started his great form which eventually made him a major champion!
Keane Barry then played Rob Cross who was looking for some revenge having lost to ‘Dynamite’ in Munich. However Barry had a superb display and averaged 101,5 to beat Cross 6-3 despite Voltage averaging over 104 himself!
Then to the game where the crowd was waiting for: hometown hero Danny Noppert came in action against Madars Razma! Razma had an off day and to the delight of the crowd it was an easy 6-1 win for Danny!
The Freeze told me that it was an amazing feeling to play in front of such a crowd and that being left out of the Premier League helps him to focus on these ranked events!
Joe Cullen and Stephen Bunting then had a darting thriller and it seemed like Cullen was going to win it, but he missed matchdarts as The Bullet punished him! Up next was the walk-on of the day as Damon Heta played the legendary Steve Beaton and was wearing a crown and an orange jacket walking on to ‘van links naar rechts’ which made the crowd go absolutely wild!
Heta then let his darts speak as well and won 6-4. As he told me he just googled some stuff to get inspired for his walk-ons and who knows what he’ll do on the final day!
Last game of the night was Martin Schindler against Roman Benecky. Neither of them got going but it was the experience that saw Martin Schindler win, who surprisingly said he prefers playing Michael van Gerwen on Sunday as Gabriel Clemens is his mate so he hates playing him.
Between the sessions I went to get some fastfood with my fellow journalists and it was incredibly busy there, an early sign of what the evening session would look like.
When order 36 was finished people would scream ‘double 18!!’ and when 57 was done someone made the interesting decision to go ’19 double 19’!
When a Stephen Bunting lookalike walked in, people started singing surfin’ bird!
I then found out why it was such an incredible atmosphere at the restaurant, cause the venue was pretty much sold out with over 4000 people in the crowd, more than twice the amount of the other sessions.
This amazing crowd got going from the start as Daryl Gurney’s Sweet Caroline started, when he took on Nathan Aspinall.
The Asp won it 6-4, and wasn’t happy about Daryl on stage as he said ‘Daryl is one of my best friends off stage but I thought he was too intense there!’
Game two saw crowd favourite Berry van Peer go 1-4 down to Jonny Clayton, but he came back to 5-5 and it was the Dutchman who won the decider! I don’t think I have ever seen someone so happy prior to the interview as Berry was still jumping and celebrating when he got to us!
The World Champion Michael Smith had a bit of a struggle but still managed to get his first ever win over Jim Williams 6-4, and is determined to defend his title here in ‘MVG’s backyarden’
The best display of the evening came from Ryan Searle who averaged over 106 in demolishing Dimitri van den Bergh 6-1!
Michael van Gerwen then had a fairly easy 6-2 win over Gabriel Clemens in front of a home crowd that included his own daughter, and it meant a lot to him to have his daughter with him there and to show her ‘what dad is doing for work’!
In round 3 it is another German in Martin Schindler and as MVG said ‘it is time to beat the Germans cause they beat us often enough in sports!’
Snakebite Peter Wright then seemed to have another struggle as a low 80 average saw him go 1-5 down to Krzysztof Ratajski but somehow Wright came back all the way to 5-5 and won the last leg decider! A 7th consecutive win over Ratajski although Wright told me to be silent about that.
Wright said now that the Premier League is pretty much game over it is time to fully focus on these ranked events with the Matchplay and Worlds prize money to be defended later this year and despite his lack of form Wright told me ‘I’ll be ready for those, don’t you worry!’
Luke Humphries then surprisingly played his first ever game in The Netherlands and it was just another ton plus average today as Cool Hand saw off Ross Smith! Luke did enjoy the atmosphere here in the Dutch nation, and could also feel some extra pressure being the number one seed here!
Last game on was a special one between Dirk van Duijvenbode and Dylan Slevin. When walking from backstage to the main venue I heard the crowd laughing and it turned out that ‘Aubergenius’ felt over the oche during his well known walk-on! Van Duijvenbode clearly struggled with his leg and as the game continued it only seemed to get worse!
Slevin kept his cool by hitting doubles last dart in hand despite the crowd, which had been class all tournament, really misbehaving themselves in this one. DVD fought back as we went into a deciding leg and it was a superb 129 finish with two double 18’s from Dirk that saw him win it!
After a medical check it was decided that he would not do any interviews, so hopefully he’ll still be able to play at his best in the final day of the Dutch Darts Championship!
—–Ends—-
Words & Images: Wim Blokpoel
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