Q-School day 1

First day is in the books and we have our first three card holders. We'll start in the UK, where Jason Lowe claimed his card, he's seemingly dropped off the scene a bit in the last 18 months, at least according to dartsdatabase, but looked pretty decent the last time we saw him (he was a Pro Tour semi finalist in 2018 and did well at the UK Open) so should be able to hold his own. Gary Blades claimed the other card, which is a bit of a weird one after claiming less than a grand on the Challenge Tour last year and only making the last 128 at Q-School on one day in 2019, so I'm a bit sceptical if he isn't going to go straight back down at the end of 2021. In Europe, a complete unknown in Harald Leitinger won the card, apparently he's more of a soft tip guy if what I've been reading on Twitter is remotely accurate. Very surprising one, but the list of players he beat to win the card is legitimate so fair play to the lad.

More or less everyone useful got selected in the predictamania, having a very decent day of those to not win cards was Martijn Kleermaker who lost the final to Leitinger, this kind of has a feel of McGeeney last year in that he'll surely do enough to get the card in the bag by the end of day 2. Also picking up useful chunks of points were soft tip specialist Boris Krcmar, former world finalist Andy Hamilton, American Dan Lauby, perennial card holder Tony Newell and Czech ace Karel Sedlacek.

The likes of Hunt, Telnekes, de Graaf, Harms, Plaisier, Koltsov, Brooks, Heta, Evans, Ashton, Edhouse, Vandenboegarde, de Decker, Wayne Jones and Lerchbacher were all able to make the last 32 or better and set a solid enough foundation. On the ladies side, Sherrock was able to grab a couple of points, while Suzuki failed to score.

Other players who also with a bad day one include Jenkins, Monk, Menzies, Barry, McKinstry, Dennant, Rafferty, Fullwell, Veenstra, Mitchell, Scott Taylor, Waites, Asada, Burton and Nijman, who could do with a board win as a minimum tomorrow, otherwise it may well be too much to catch up on already unless they bink. A couple of people picked Simon Stevenson - he didn't show (we know about Warren and Kurz already), but that's because Cadby resigned his card earlier, which is a bit late to do so, but there you go. Sorry, no refunds on the zero points you'll get.