Matchplay fast approaching

Well that's another Euro Tour in the books and it's yet another win for Nijman, making it an astonishing eight titles and we're not even half way through the year (although we're well over half way through all the tournaments that will be played. At this stage, one's got to think that he's played himself into a spot where he should be being considered for a World Series call up in 2027, I would use the P-word but until he does something on TV, you can't really consider it yet. Heck, they've spurned players who HAVE done something on TV multiple times in the past, so even that doesn't mean anything. He's top five in scoring this year of players that you think would play the PL (I'm excluding Anderson here) behind only the two Lukes, Price and Dobey, so the game is there and the titles are there. Except on TV. Here's what it's done to the FRH rankings:

1 Luke Littler

2 Gian van Veen

3 Luke Humphries

4 Jonny Clayton

5 Ryan Searle (UP 3)

6 Wessel Nijman (UP 5)

7 Gerwyn Price (DOWN 1)

8 James Wade (DOWN 3)

9 Josh Rock (DOWN 2)

10 Danny Noppert (DOWN 1)

11 Gary Anderson (DOWN 1)

12 Chris Dobey

13 Stephen Bunting

14 Nathan Aspinall (UP 1)

15 Ross Smith (UP 2)

16 Michael van Gerwen (DOWN 2)

17 Luke Woodhouse (DOWN 1)

18 Jermaine Wattimena

19 Krzysztof Ratajski

20 Rob Cross (NEW)

I didn't immediately post this as Nijman was so close to Searle (who got a nice bump after a Pro Tour final) that he might have got into the top 5. Not yet, but give it until the end of the week and he'll be there. Everyone else in a fairly close race between 4th and 11th shuffles down a bit, apart from Clayton who's got a small buffer at the top. Aspinall and Smith having good runs moves them above MvG who's looking like he's going to need to really go deep in the worlds to maintain any sort of ranking. He's only just in the top 20 in the tour card race. Cross picking up a bit of form with a Pro Tour win and Sunday's final sees him back into the top 20. A bit lower down since the last one, de Decker's found a little bit of form and arrested the slide, although realistically he's out of the Matchplay at this point, Beau Greaves is into the top 64, surprise Pro Tour finalist Maik Kuivenhoven is just shy of the top 75, while another good floor run for Tom Bissell gets him into the top 80. In other Tom news, Sykes is up into the top 100 after a fantastic Euro Tour debut.

I would talk about the Matchplay race, but it's really pretty dull at this point. There's only two events left before the cutoff, I thought ET10 counted but it doesn't. As such, there's really only three spots to play for and Gurney, Menzies and Heta have a big edge. Heta's over 5k ahead of Chisnall who's the last one out. Huybrechts, Bialecki and Sedlacek are within 10k of Heta, but that's a Pro Tour final so is going to be a very tough ask. de Graaf and Veenstra are mathematically alive but would need a win and some help (Veenstra actually needs more than a win being just over 15k behind). The next two are remarkably Cristo Reyes and Beau Greaves but that's only noted for just how good they're both playing. The Grand Prix race looks a lot more interesting but we'll cross that bridge after the Matchplay.