Q School

These are the exempt operators. The ones spared the opening bloodbath. Rested. Watching. Calculating. Knowing full well that exemption does not guarantee salvation – it merely delays judgement...

Many, if we’re brutally honest, knew the odds were stacked as precariously as a drunken game of Jenga...

Mason Whitlock, still carrying the emotional bruises of what had been a deeply unpleasant experience the day before ...

Today was judgement day. The reckoning. The moment where hope either crystalised into confirmation or dissolved into calculator-fuelled anxiety. Sixteen players marched directly into the Final Stage ...

Whitlock headed straight for Instagram and let fly with a post that ricocheted around the darting ecosphere.

But come this afternoon, the Bronzed Adonis found that extra gear that only muscle memory and decades of tungsten warfare can provide...

What lies ahead from Thursday onward will be infinitely more punishing – but for now, the veteran has earned a brief ceasefire...

If he were a footballer, we’d be singing ‘he’s one of our own’ from the terraces. A man better known to many as the voice, the pen, the presence behind the scenes at major events...

No lights. No walk-ons. No safety net. Just tungsten, tension and survival. This is PDC Q-School – the sport’s most unforgiving proving ground.