World Series

I don't care much for these events, but the selected players did raise an eyebrow:

Per the PDC's Twitter account. This seems very strange. I can get why you want to have the big names in, but do you really need to have all five of van Gerwen, Cross, Gurney, Anderson and Wright in there? I'd have thought Anderson might have taken a couple of them off, Wright as well isn't exactly a spring chicken either. Only the one event for Price, Smith and Wade? Then we have Barney getting an invite for, well, I don't know why, Suljovic is fine, but with them taking their Aussie triumverate, that only leaves one more spot, and while Aspinall is absolutely a fine selection, there's plenty that should have been considered. I'm shocked Joe Cullen didn't get picked even once, given his omission from the Contenders in the Premier League. Maybe they would finally have given Ian White or Jonny Clayton a bit of credit - while they don't have the same potential future as Cullen does, they've put in the results and should have been in the discussion. After what they did last year by giving Dimitri and Jamie Lewis (remember him?) a chance, you might have thought they'd have given a few players who weren't in the Contenders (and maybe redo some players who were) a bit of a spotlight.

Would anyone have really hated things if they left Wright out of the Aussie tour, Anderson out of the two other events, shifted the Price spot to all of Australia instead of Wright (I think you do need to have the same core group for that section just for logistical reasons, and I think Price would make a heck of a lot more sense against the Australian lineups), and then you've got two extra spots in each of the USA and Germany, which you can then give to Cullen, Clayton, White and +1 whoever else you think is worth a spot.

Heck, maybe if you have a bit more divergence between the two halves of the tour, you don't get the situation where, unless one of the +3 in the USA/Germany binks or otherwise goes very deep, the eight that are going down under don't automatically become the eight seeds in the finals - which, while still unranked, can act as a qualifier for a ranked event. If Hopp didn't miss with three clear darts at tops in the European Championship semis, Wade would only have made the Grand Slam through this method.