Well it was really only going to come down to one of two things - if someone on the fringes made a hero run (they didn't), and if not, who was going to be the one man to miss (Gurney). One thing I'd kind of like to see, given that the Matchplay is the obvious choice to be the next tournament for expansion, is to make it 40 players, and have a day one on the Friday where 9-16 on the Pro Tour would play 17-24 in the Pro Tour to make the event proper (or, for that matter, 1-8 not qualified just based on the Pro Tour in 2026, so that new card holders have more of a chance). Whether you do it as one session first to six kind of like a Euro Tour event, one longer session first to eight, or two where it's first to ten just like the first round as is, I don't know. Probably depends on how many tickets they think they can shift, which right now should be "all of them". That would give us Gurney, Huybrechts, Bialecki, Sedlacek, de Graaf, Reyes, Veenstra and Clemens, which is frankly a thousand times more interesting than the bottom eight who did make it (although the number 9 in Zonneveld is someone who I really want to see how he does on debut), and right now that gives you seven different nationalities in that group, none of them English. Which would be a GREAT Euro selling point, although granted that is quite clearly just circumstances for this year. Let's hope some of those will push on to the Grand Prix - Reyes is in a spot right now at the expense of Schindler, other than that it's just the same field, I really hate how the two hardest to qualify for majors have basically zero churn in them. The Euro Tour doesn't help that and we'll come to Leverkusen in a minute.
I wondered what a field would look like if you went off of my database based on the same qualifying criteria, but instead of money, you went with legs won or averages. Now my database filters down to just the last year (as I use it for betting, and anything more than a year old really isn't relevant), so instead of two years all money/one year Pro Tour, I'll go the full year for the first sixteen, and then just 2026 for the next lot. For scoring, you would get:
Littler, Humphries, Price, Anderson, Dobey, van Veen, van Gerwen, Nijman, Bunting, Rock, Clayton, van Duijvenbode, R Smith, Cross, Aspinall, Wade - Doets, Hood, Heta, Ratajski, Woodhouse, Searle, Zonnveld, Cullen, Noppert, Wattimena, Huybrechts, de Graaf, Greaves, Gilding, Scutt, Rydz
For legs won, you would get:
Nijman, Noppert, Dobey, Doets, Woodhouse, Wattimena, R Smith, Ratajski, van Veen, Clayton, Bunting, Gilding, Wade, Price, Rock, O'Connor - Bialecki, Cullen, van Duijvenbode, Searle, Chisnall, Reyes, Zonneveld, Gurney, Greaves, Huybrechts, Heta, Sedlacek, Bissell, Manby, Springer, Menzies
That second one would be complete carnage, as you'd be missing all of the top four in the world. But hey, if you mail the season in in favour of exhibitions, that's on you.
OK, Leverkusen. As always, numbers are short, medium and long data, with the composite value last.
Joyce/Varila - insufficient data on Varila
Huybrechts/Price - 75/78/74/76
Sedlacek/Griffin - 67/69/65/67
Vandenbogaerde/Horvat - insufficient data on Horvat
van Duijvenbode/van de Weerd - no data on van de Weerd
Wenig/Brooks - 43/49/36/42
Cullen/Manby - 53/58/53/55
Gilding/Owen - 53/54/57/55
O'Connor/Bialecki - 59/61/61/60
Doets/Gruellich - 85/82/80/82
Gurney/Kuivenhoven - 60/55/56/57
Menzies/Schmidt - insufficient data on Schmidt
Mansell/Smejda - no data on Smejda
Zonneveld/Klose - 81/82/81 (no short data on Klose)
Springer/Labanauskas - 65/65/64/65
Cross/Hopp - 70/61/63/65
Of those we have not much on, we kind of know what Horvat and Klose are. van de Weerd is a complete random but didn't drop below 87 in the qualifier and beat Krohne, Roetzsch and Barkhausen, so doesn't seem that bad. Varila's won an SDC tour this year but hasn't really impressed that much. Schmidt played ET4 and took Springer to a decider but didn't look too impressive while doing so. Smejda played a Euro Tour back in late 2024 and was not impressive against Aspinall. Be back Friday evening for round two, the Sunday might be a bit late as I'll be coming off a full day at the football, both live on TV, which doesn't end until gone midnight.
