After four fairly dominant games last night, we have our first four Quarter-Finalists in Leicester – Welsh darts duo Gerwyn Price and Jonny Clayton, joined by Ryan Joyce and Nathan Aspinall.
The second batch of Last 16 ties are set to be played tonight, before the serious business begins on Friday night with the final eight.
The action will kick off tonight with Niels Zonneveld, who will take on Gary Anderson having beaten Rock on his debut a few days ago. James Wade will take on Stephen Bunting, looking to get a rare win over the bullet on the major stage, followed by World #2 Luke Humphries against the new World #16 Jermaine Wattimena. The evening will be rounded off as the potentially new #2 come the end of the week Gian van Veen takes out Ryan Searle for the final Quarter-Finals spot.
My pick of the night is the Humphries-Wattimena match-up, and for multiple reasons.
“Cool Hand” comes into the encounter having reached the final of the Grand Prix on each of the last three occasions, beating Price in 2023, and then losing to De Decker and Littler on the following two occasions. However, he hasn’t quite kick started his 2026 campaign the way he would’ve wanted. His first-round win over Dave Chisnall saw him average 80.41, his second lowest at the Grand Prix, only going lower in his 2022 First Round encounter with Chris Dobey, averaging 78.31.
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In comparison, Jermaine Wattimena (above) came into the event having not won a single game on the Grand Prix stage since his run to the Quarter-Finals in 2019. Granted he had only qualified twice since then, it was still a record that needed rectifying, and he did just that. He came through comfortably against Chris Dobey on Tuesday night, putting in an average of 86.55. Only once that “Machine Gun” gone over this, when he beat Peter Wright in the Last 16 of 2019, averaging 88.85.
The pair have met fifteen times in PDC darts, with Humphries unsurprisingly having the edge, winning ten of the meetings, All three of the 2026 meetings have also gone the way of the World #2, including a European Tour Last 16, and the first round of the World Series of Darts Finals less than two weeks ago.
They have only met three times in ranking majors, with Humphries winning the first two, coming at the second-round stage of the 2020 World Championships, and the again in the second-round at the 2020 Players Championship Finals. They didn’t meet again in a game of this importance until the 2024 European Championship, where Wattimena took a 10-4 win in the Quarter-Finals before going on to reach his only major final.
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The winner will face either Niels Zonneveld or Gary Anderson for a spot in the Semi-Finals, so there is a potential of an all-Dutch clash ridden with opportunity, but also the show-stopper of a Humphries-Anderson encounter in Leicester.
Images: PDC
