Been a little bit of time since I last posted during the Masters, so let's go through a lot of what we've learned in the early days of the new season.
1) Luke is still top, but Luke is nearer
Still a clear number one, but Humphries looked very good at MK and I think is showing enough that he's a clear #2 now, pushing ahead of the group behind him. It's nowhere near a 1a and 1b, if anything it's still Littler - big gap - Humphries - next few, but he has at least pushed himself up a bit.
2) Price remains underrated and dangerous
Semi final run in the first TV event of the year is very nice, and he backed it up with some good stuff on the Pro Tour - perhaps a tad early of an exit in event one but he really didn't do much wrong against Scutt, then unreal play in event 2. You all know by now I'm not much of an averages guy, but just look back at the DC match centre. It's obscene, and it required something special by Nijman (who surely works out TV this year, right. Right?) in the final to edge it, that may well be a match of the year contender already.
3) Speaking of something of the year contenders
I reposted on X what might be the miscount of the year already. Gurney is playing Lukeman, and Martin sets up tops wanting 142 for the leg. Gurney then proceeds to take out 142 himself, the only problem being he was actually on 175. Now it's pretty easy to look at your opponent's score by mistake, Menzies did that hilariously against de Decker last year, but surely Daryl, knowing he needs about a ton to leave an outshot from 255 in the previous visit, should know he's not on an out? I can't remember ever being in the setup range, not hitting the set up, and then thinking I can check out next visit. It was quite a thing.
4) Wright really should have retired
Losing 6-1 to Suljovic averaging 77, doing a bit better but losing 6-5 to Tom Sykes, and just now in the Euro Tour qualifier he at least beat Jim Long but then lost easily to Adam Gawlas. I really don't hope he's just dialling the season in and hoping to hold a top 40 OOM spot and get back to Ally Pally (oddly, his current projected seeding is actually higher than where he is in the Matchplay race, presumably some people in the high 20-low 30 range did alright whereas his back end of 2024 was pretty bad. In any case, he will be defending quarter final money next December. Go out early there, and he's probably outside of tour card retaining range should he keep going.
5) Speaking of Gawlas
Has he finally got a bit of consistency in his game? Masters was a bit of a mess, but in event 1 he took down Edhouse, Soutar, Burton, Rydz and Nijman, before Aspinall was a bit too much in the semi final, then secured another board final beating de Decker and Brooks before losing to Noppert, and as I speak he's one game away from making the first Euro Tour (edit - he's just beaten Labanauskas to make it as I write). Yes, some of those names aren't the top names, but there aren't any gimmies there either, so he's had a good start, and let's see if he can keep it going.
6) Decent World Cup moves
This one flew a bit under the radar, but good moves. Slovenia getting a spot with Pratnemer on the tour looks alright, and an African qualifier coupled with South Africa getting an auto berth seems like absolutely the right move. Gibraltar and Bahrain have gone, the former not really pushing on and the latter still having an out through the Asian qualifiers, don't think much is lost there.
7) Cool to see some PDC names in the Dutch Open pairs
This one kind of caught people out a touch, but quite a few of the Dutch players were allowed to enter the pairs, with van Duijvenbode and Kuivenhoven taking all the cake, but van Schie made the final, while Klaasen, Landman and Veenstra were all in teams that made the semis. This is the sort of thing that I think should be allowed more often - not allowing people in the singles is fine, but this adds a bit of decent publicity to non-PDC events, which I think we all agree can only be a good thing.
8) Nice job Paul
He needed to dodge quite a few bullets, but Paul Krohne took the singles, and he's continuing to do very nicely for himself after a PDC spell didn't really work out for him. Hopefully he keeps some interest in PDC events and enters some of the Euro Tour qualifiers where I think he'd do pretty well, and maybe in the future he can come back. He's only 25 after all, so plenty of time on his side. While speaking about the Dutch Open as well, cool to see the Turkish pair win the women's doubles - would be cool to see the men's game there move on, and while it'd be a long way off, how lit would a Euro Tour in Istanbul potentially be?
9) McGuirk looking good
Of all the new card holders, Shane's had a pretty solid start. Getting to the TV stages of the Masters was obviously a nice achievement, but he did alright in the couple of Pro Tours we've just had, only being stopped by Wattimena and van Gerwen, which is fine, and while I can't see he entered the ET1 qualifier (he looks to be in the one for ET2), that should give him enough to get that important first round UK Open bye.
10) New PDC website is shit
While it's universally true that every single website redesign makes a site worse, and has done for over a quarter of a century, this just makes everything so much harder to find and less easy to navigate. I'm really not sure what they're hoping to achieve. At least it diverts from the shitshow that is that new TV scoreboard they're using for a while I guess.
Probably be another quiet week. There's another couple of Pro Tours early next week, but nothing PDC apart from some more UK Open qualifiers which I'm not even going to try to understand. Some WDF stuff, but I imagine I won't be back until just before we get into the first Euro Tour in Poland in just over a week from now.
