Billed as one of the standout players in 2024, Ritchie Edhouse has enjoyed his most successful year to date on the PDC circuit, having been a regular on the tour since 2021 – his second stint as a professional darts player. Having suffered consecutive back-to-back defeats at the 2023 and 2024 PDC World Championships (to David Cameron and Jeffrey de Graaf respectively), Ritchie comes to Ally Pally this year off the back of his first major title win, and with it, the high expectations of a deep run into the latter stages of this years event.
Ritchie enters the World’s this year as the 29th seed, and as such, will enter the tournament in the second round. He will face the winner of Ian ‘Diamond’ White and Sandro Eric Sosing, both of whom could provide a potential second round upset. Ritchie is in Section 2 of the draw, alongside former PDC World Champion Rob Cross, the newly crowned PDC World Youth Champion Gian van Veen, and three former UK Open Champions in Danny Noppert, Nathan Aspinall and Andrew Gilding.
The good news is that Edhouse won’t have to concern himself with any of those until the fourth round – the bad news is that his potential third round opponent is none-other than Luke Littler, who must first negotiate his way past Ryan Meikle or Fallon Sherrock.
For Edhouse to call himself World Champion, his likely route would be a second round clash with Ian White, Luke Littler in the third round, Danny Noppert in the fourth round, and then Rob Cross in the Quarter Final. He’d then likely face off against the reigning and defending PDC World Champion Luke Humphries, before setting up a mouthwatering clash against what would likely be the winner of Michael Smith and Michael van Gerwen. Talk about doing it the hard way!
Ritchie will find out his second round opponent on the 20th December in the afternoon session, with Ian White and Sandro Eric Sosing set to play the third game of the session. It’ll be a session to keep an eye on for Team Mission, as both Stephen Burton and Wessel Nijman will be in action in the two preceding ties. Ritchie will then play the winner of White and Sosing two days later on the 22nd December, as he headlines the afternoon session. His potential opponent for the third round will have been decided prior to his match, with Littler vs Meikle/Sherrock set to play third on the evening session of the 21st December.
As for the setup Ritchie used in qualifying for the PDC World Championship, ‘Madhouse’ uses his own signature darts from Mission, with a black titanium coating. He pairs his barrels with the Mission Force90 integrated flight/shaft system, in No. 2 medium. From what I can tell, Ritchie is one of the few players to leave his points unchanged right out of the box, opting to persist with the 32mm black points that come as standard with his darts.
Thanks to Mission, I was able to get hands-on with Edhouse’s darts in advance of the World Championship, along with the Force90 setup, and of course, the infamous sleeve!
The Ritchie Edhouse darts feature a ‘straight barrel design with a bull nose’. In short, they’re about as basic as darts can get. The grip, however, is what really sets these barrels apart from the rest. They utilise a ‘stepped fine square grooved design’, which really helps to create an agressive feel, despite looking very understated at first glance. The lower ‘step’, as Mission describe it, is very deep-cut into the barrel, and spaced out evenly with the upper ‘step’, creating a consistent feel across the entirety of the barrel, ensuring that whether you’re a middle or front-gripper, the darts will have a sense of familiarity about them.
While the bull-nose leads itself to deflections, the Mission Force90 all-in-one setup helps to combat this, with the unique interpretation of the No. 2 shape allowing the darts to slide alongside the flight and down the barrel, rather than catching the flight and skewing off in another direction entirely.
The barrels are finished off with stunning blue electroplating, which, as Mission put it, ‘[provides] a sharp contrast to the tungsten that’s exposed by our precision re-machining process’. They arrive in standard Mission packaging, and come fitted with a set of short Grip-Lock shafts, No. 2 Ritchie Edhouse flights, and an sngled Point Protector.
The darts are available in 21g, 23g and 25g, and are 53.20mm long – slightly longer than most typical straight barrel darts. The 21g are exactly 6.00mm in width, while the 23g and 25g are 6.30mm. The barrels are available in both plain silver, and black coated variations, as well as available in 21g soft-tip (though only in silver). The silver edition (reviewed here) is available for £47.95, while the black edition are slightly more expensive, at £49.95.
It would be criminal of me to not mention the REACH sleeve Edhouse wears too, available in black and blue for just £9.95 per pair.
How do you think Ritchie Edhouse will get on at this year’s PDC World Championship? Let us know over on X/Twitter, @Darts_World and @JoeReid180!
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Words: Joe Reid
Photograph: PDC Graphics: Mission Darts