Poland’s Sebastian Bialecki picked up his maiden Players Championship title with an 8-6 win over Niels Zonneveld . With many of the sport’s elite choosing to dodge the Hildesheim double-header it left the door ajar for a new name to walk through.
Enter The Bolt. And exit with a trophy. In fact, Dave Chisnall – currently 13th on the Order of Merit – was the highest-ranked player in attendance. For Bialecki, this was a first senior PDC title to go alongside his six Development Tour wins.
With victory, he leaps nineteen places up the rankings to sneak into the top 80. And when we say sneak – he’s at number 79. That’s less a leap and more a very precise hop.
The 21-year-old had to navigate a string of testing ties to get his hands on the title. He beat Lukas Wenig, Adam Paxton, and Luke Woodhouse before turning on the style to dispatch Cammie Menzies and Gian van Veen with a pair of superb ton-plus averages.
In the semi-finals, Bialecki clawed his way back from 3-0 down to defeat Danny Noppert – and if you’re counting Dutchmen, that was just the beginning. The Bolt then faced another in the final, overturning a 6-4 deficit to rattle off four straight legs putting Triple Z to the sword.
Noppert, to his credit, fired in twenty 180s – enough to win a “most maximums” trophy if such a thing existed. Which it doesn’t.
Sweden’s Andreas Harrysson produced the highest average of the day – a thumping 110.18 – in a 6-2 win over Max Hopp. Again, no prize. Not even a nice sticker.
Early on, the Dutch looked poised to dominate, with five of them reaching the quarter-finals. It all felt a bit like Blackpool déjà vu. But this time, it was a Pole who prevailed.
At just 21, Bialecki becomes the youngest winner of a Players Championship title this year – and the youngest since, yep, that teenager: Luke Littler.
With another Players Championship on the menu tomorrow – we go again.
——Ends—–
Images: PDC
