A few people didn't have great weeks - van Gerwen seems the obvious one, especially considering the players he lost to, but there's several in and around the fringes of the top 16 in the FRH rankings that really didn't do much of anything. Ian White in particular continues to look way, way off where he was recently, and it's a fun question as to who's now the best player in Stoke given how much Lewis has dropped off recently.
In terms of year to date scoring, it's de Sousa who's leading the way right now, just ahead of Clayton and Price in that order, but all are separated by less than a sixth of a point. Cullen and Ratajski round out the top five, just ahead of Humphries - van Gerwen and Wright aren't even in the top six, while the finalists in PC12 round out the top 10. Perhaps it's a surprise, after mentioning White in the previous paragraph, that he's still in the top 16. But here's some fun names to throw out who are in the top 32 of scoring - Scott Mitchell is up there at 23, sandwiched by two Premier League players. Jason Lowe is still hanging around. Schindler's up there (note that I've not added any of the Superleague into the stats yet, and I'm still uncertain as to how much I will add in). Lennon is still up there. Note that Soutar isn't any more.
New FRH rankings:
1 Gerwyn Price
2 Michael van Gerwen (UP 1)
3 Peter Wright (DOWN 1)
4 James Wade
5 Gary Anderson
6 Jose de Sousa
7 Dimitri van den Bergh
8 Dave Chisnall
9 Michael Smith
10 Joe Cullen
11 Krzysztof Ratajski (UP 1)
12 Nathan Aspinall (DOWN 1)
13 Jonny Clayton
14 Dirk van Duijvenbode (UP 4)
15 Glen Durrant (DOWN 1)
16 Rob Cross (DOWN 1)
17 Simon Whitlock (DOWN 1)
18 Daryl Gurney (DOWN 1)
19 Stephen Bunting (UP 1)
20 Devon Petersen (NEW)
Ian White's gone. Not even #21, King's above him. van Gerwen and Wright are basically neck and neck still. Ratajski actually scored less than Aspinall this week but clearly has less degradation on his ranking money right now. van Duijvenbode making two finals is enough to see him jump a lot, and it's that close that less than 25,000 points separate Cullen from Durrant. Petersen only jumps in by 25 points over King. Lower down, Humphries didn't really climb but did solidify his top 30 place, Adrian Lewis is out of the top 32 and plummeting, Ross Smith is one place outside the top 40 (currently propped up by Labanauskas who had a mare of a week), while Kleermaker hits the top 50, which finally sees Hendo depart.
They've announced another two sets of Super Series before the Matchplay. I like this idea - front load as many of the Players Championship events as you can to get the floor tournaments where you're not having fans out of the way, and then try to get some semblance of a Euro Tour in afterwards. This is kind of what Porter is alluding to - I do wonder if he could have had the second set of events have one day run two lots of Euro Tour qualifiers for a first two events in, say, Germany to be scheduled - you could then book one venue for ET1 with the qualifiers already worked out, then have Tuesday/Wednesday be Pro Tour events, Thursday be the normal associate/home nation qualifiers, then have ET2 straight after. It might make it an easier sell for the bigger names to travel if you know you can block book a week+ and know you're going to get 4k prize money minimum (if you are a Euro Tour seed) and be able to add Pro Tour money in between. We'll see, although I can understand the reluctance to hold a qualifier while there's still uncertainty as to what they're holding. That said, with the amount of boards they have, it wouldn't be too tough to tack on the tour card holders qualifier for the first event at the end of the series?
Not sure when I'll be back again, it's been a big break since the last post, and there is nothing ranked until mid-June. One thing I will say though - it's really, really hard to be interested in this seniors event that's doing the round when there's at least five players who, were it not for being ineligible for being tour card holders, who'd smack the whole field up from a great height. Does anyone really think that any one of Wright, Anderson, Whitlock, King or White wouldn't smash the field?
