We now know our field, barring the last few Rileys qualifiers, and we saw two debut winners at PDC senior level over the pro qualifiers - Cadby you'd expect sooner or later, but Ratajski binking one was more of a surprise, while we know he's able to mix it, to be able to do so on the PDC stage consistently enough to get through all the way is another matter that I didn't think he had in him at this stage of his career. Credit to the guy, 17 grand in the Pro Tour bank (including mincashes for two European Tour events that he's apparently qualified for) will take him a long way to making the worlds again this year, and possibly some other major events - including claiming the tour card he so nearly got last season.
Some surprising misses on the pro level that didn't qualify - Suljovic didn't play, which seems an odd choice, he could have entered events 4-6 and would only have needed to win his first two matches in event 4 and then withdrawn in order to qualify, but it's his choice and if it keeps him fresher for later in the year then that's fair enough, he doesn't know quite how much the Premier League might take out of him. From those that did attempt to qualify, I was most surprised by Dekker missing out, he looked in hot form late last year but couldn't get close, Lennon, old Huybrechts and Green are also surprising misses.
I've been able to hack out a list of the dartconnect links from the source to avoid having to use quite so much of their interface, but sadly they don't seem to have any sort of API to grab the information in an easy to parse manner (despite an email to them to see what they could do, which isn't much at this stage), as such it's a slow process, I've got half of one event done, and with more events starting this weekend it's going to be a big backlog. Being away for a chunk of the off weekend before the UK Open doesn't help matters either really.
New FRH rankings:
1 Michael van Gerwen
2 Rob Cross
3 Peter Wright
4 Phil Taylor
5 Daryl Gurney
6 Gary Anderson
7 Mensur Suljovic
8 Simon Whitlock
9 Michael Smith
10 Dave Chisnall
11 Raymond van Barneveld
12 Gerwyn Price
13 Alan Norris
14 Darren Webster
15 Ian White
16 James Wade
17 Kim Huybrechts
18 Benito van de Pas
19 Jelle Klaasen
20 Joe Cullen
Ratajski rises to #47 with his win, while Cadby is just one place outside the top 70 already. Elsewhere lower down, Steve West's good weekend sees him claim a top 30 spot, Jeffrey de Zwaan's final sees him crack the top 60, while Dave Pallett's resurgence sees him in the top 80.
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