Sunday 21 October 2018

Ratajski hype

He's only gone and done it again, hasn't he? In a final where whoever won, de Zwaan got done over for the last Grand Slam spot, Krzysztof managed to defeat Adrian Lewis to do the double and immediately secure a bunch of things - the tour card looked safe, but getting into the Slam (whereby apparently the first tiebreaker amongst players winning Players Championship events is actually the number that they've won, who knew) and getting a much better seed at Minehead. It's all a bit of a mess in terms of permutations for Minehead and the worlds, by the looks of things Tabern, Edgar, Taylor, Hunt and Alcinas were among the last few people to make Minehead with van de Pas, Woodhouse and O'Connor being the last few players out, Jimmy Hendriks also being close despite hitting a nine today, while Luke Humphries making it all the way to the semi finals was just one round short of making it.

As far as the worlds goes, it's looking like Humphries just did enough, just eliminating Edgar, Gilding and Razma, Justin Pipe also being a player that also missed out - while there's still things that can still change, in that Pipe just being outside the seeds but making a ridiculous run in the Grand Slam qualifier would allow him to get in, a lot has been cleaned up.

A word on the game between Suljovic and Kyle Anderson - that might be one of the highest level games that's ever been seen on the Pro Tour. It finished 6-4 to Anderson, but between them they won all ten legs within fifteen darts, half of those within twelve darts, and they were scoring heavily enough that both were scoring over 100 per turn on the legs they didn't win. Really sick stuff.

New FRH rankings:

1 Michael van Gerwen
2 Rob Cross
3 Peter Wright
4 Gary Anderson
5 Daryl Gurney
6 Mensur Suljovic
7 Phil Taylor
8 Ian White
9 Michael Smith
10 Simon Whitlock
11 Gerwyn Price
12 Darren Webster
13 Dave Chisnall
14 James Wade
15 Adrian Lewis (UP 2)
16 Jonny Clayton (DOWN 1)
17 Joe Cullen (DOWN 1)
18 Mervyn King
19 Stephen Bunting
20 Steve Beaton (NEW)

Kyle Anderson is up into the top 25 following his semi final today, while Barney is down to number 28, below both Klaasen and Wattimena in terms of the Dutch rankings, with de Zwaan probably coming close real soon. Ratajski cracks the top 40 for I think the first time, up to number 38.

Over the next week I'll preview the European Championship and do some more looks at how things stand in the tour card race as well as some season long Players Championship stats.

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