The early curtain call of Michael van Gerwen at the 2026 PDC World Darts Championship landed with a dull thud rather than an explosion – and for few did it resonate more painfully than Vincent van der Voort.
Friend, former tour ally, and trusted sounding board, MVG’s compatriot watched from close quarters as the three-time world champion was brushed aside 4–1 by Gary.
Afterwards, his assessment was measured, honest, and quietly alarming. “The game wasn’t super bad,” he said on the Darts Draait Door podcast, “but at the key moments he didn’t show up.”
And that, in essence, is the problem. For the first time since 2016 – pandemic asterisk aside – Van Gerwen will not feature in the World Championship quarter-finals. It’s a statistic that doesn’t scream decline, but it certainly whispers warning. Van der Voort was careful not to diminish Anderson’s role in the outcome.
“Losing to Gary Anderson can happen,” he said. “He’s simply a class player. But you expect more from the world number three. Right now he’s not playing like the world number three.”
On paper, there was no implosion. The averages were healthy. Van Gerwen hovered close to a ton and fired powerfully in the opening exchanges. To the untrained eye, it might even have looked passable. But darts matches at this level are decided not by surface numbers, but by microscopic margins.
“Too many visits without trebles,” Van der Voort observed. “That didn’t used to happen to him. Where he normally struck at crucial moments, he let it slip now.”
Those missed gears showed themselves early. Van Gerwen was handed opportunities in the opening sets that, in his imperial years, would have been punished without mercy.
“In the first set Anderson keeps him completely in it,” Van der Voort analysed. “But Michael doesn’t push on after that himself. In the past that was the moment he’d show: this was your mistake, now it’s over.”
There was a flicker. A reminder. The third set briefly hinted at resurgence, Van Gerwen finally finding his sharpest rhythm. Momentum beckoned. Then it vanished.
“Then you give away the first leg so easily again,” Van der Voort sighed. “That’s happening to him too often now. It has to do with match sharpness and form.”For Van der Voort, this wasn’t an isolated stumble but the natural consequence of a difficult year.
“You can’t do little for almost a year and then expect to get away with it on this stage. At this level that’s no longer enough.” Still, he resisted the temptation to brand the campaign a disaster. “It’s not a straight fail,” he stressed. “But it is meagre. You don’t need to put a number on it.”
What worries him more is inconsistency. “It’s too erratic. One day he’s there, the next he’s not. That’s not the level that belongs to him.” Hence why the Anderson defeat, in his eyes, was merely a symptom. “This didn’t go wrong today. This comes from somewhere. He’s had a very difficult year.”
A phone call followed the loss. “He’s sick to his stomach,” Van der Voort revealed. “He’s still a winner, that’s definitely still in there. He did everything to be as good as possible today. The preparation was good. It just wasn’t good enough.”
There was no accusation, only realism. “This isn’t unwillingness. But if it’s not there, it’s not there. And you have to face that.”
Now comes a defining stretch. Van Gerwen ends the year 21st on the Order of Merit with heavy prize money to defend. “If you have another year like this, you can simply drop out of the top sixteen,” Van der Voort warned. “That sounds bizarre, but it’s very possible.” And the pressure is relentless, with names like Jonny Clayton and Gian van Veen closing in.
“Gian plays everything,” Van der Voort noted. “He’s a young, hungry dog. You’re going to see more and more of those guys.”The two will sit down together next week.
For Van der Voort, the central question is brutally simple. “What do you still want yourself? It’s his career. He decides everything. I can only point out what I see and what’s coming.”
And his hope? Crystal clear. “I hope he says: we’re going a hundred percent for it this year. That he feels that hunger again. I would really love to hear that.”
Because talent never leaves. But hunger? That must be reignited.
—–Ends—–
Images: PDC
