A rare weekend without any main tour action, but there's been a bunch of stuff going on elsewhere. Firstly, we had the opening weekend of the Development Tour, with Ted Evetts getting all the cake, doing a double, Nathan Rafferty and Ryan Meikle getting the other two. These are all somewhat familiar names, Evetts having played in the worlds on a couple of occasions already and Rafferty being heavily hyped even before he took Peter Wright out of the UK Open last year. Meikle's maybe not quite so well known to casuals, but like Rafferty he reached the second money round of last year's UK Open and has claimed his third Development Tour title, question is when he'll push on in the senior ranks, having been a tour card holder for four years now, having some OK runs but being a bit inconsistent.
Obviously this puts Evetts and Rafferty (who Ted beat in the first final) in pole position for worlds qualification if they keep the same two spots, Evetts would obviously be looking to get in through the Pro Tour, but having a backup route is always nice. Andrew Davidson's had a decent start as well, someone who's not as obvious a name but he's made the UK Open twice through amateur qualifiers already (and cashed it) so clearly has something about him, while further down it's a mix of known and unknown players, Keane Barry having three good runs being particularly notable.
Nordic events went on, Razma doing the most damage with a win and a final, Dennis Nilsson getting the other win and Labanauskas getting the other final, there were also Euro Tour qualifiers there with Nilsson bagging a couple of spots, Daniel Larsson got one, Cor Dekker (Norwegian who we've seen in the World Cup previously) another and Teuvo Haverinen from Finland getting the last spot to Denmark. Four different players got spots from the Eastern European qualifiers, Koltsov we know, Szekely's a Hungarian making his debut in Zwolle, Kciuk we know a bit about has made one, and finally Pero Ljubic will debut in Sindelfingen. Quite a few new names, which'll be fun to see how they do.
We're back with Pro Tour action next weekend, then the European Tour kicks off the weekend after that.
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