Had a mad catch up this weekend with not having the time last time out, and we've had Dev Tour, Asian Tour, Nordic/Baltic, ADA, it's been hectic, and then we've had Henry Coates come from nowhere and win a Pro Tour, and of course the Matchplay finished, so here's the latest FRH rankings (Leighton Bennett dropped off the table just now. What a waste)
1 Luke Littler
2 Gian van Veen
3 Luke Humphries
4 Gerwyn Price (UP 3)
5 Wessel Nijman (UP 1)
6 James Wade (UP 2)
7 Jonny Clayton (DOWN 3)
8 Ryan Searle (DOWN 3)
9 Josh Rock
10 Danny Noppert
11 Gary Anderson
12 Ross Smith (UP 3)
13 Chris Dobey (DOWN 1)
14 Stephen Bunting (DOWN 1)
15 Nathan Aspinall (DOWN 1)
16 Luke Woodhouse (UP 1)
17 Krzysztof Ratajski (UP 2)
18 Michael van Gerwen (DOWN 2)
19 Jermaine Wattimena (DOWN 1)
20 Rob Cross
The big moves are obviously down to Price making a final, and Wade/Smith doing pretty well compared to those around them. Heta's got fairly close to getting back into the top 20 following a Pro Tour final, Bialecki after another bink is just outside the top 40 which, if he can close out a Grand Prix run, will jump a fair chunk, Vandenbogaerde after a final from nowhere is back into the top 70 while Coates is just shy of the top 100, but should make that leap pretty quickly.
One thing I want to do is look at the respective secondary/regional tours and see which ones are doing the best. Most are fairly close to finished for the year, the Dev Tour, Asian Tour, ADA and Nordic circuits all have one weekend left, while the Challenge Tour will have one left after next weekend. The CDC is lagging behind a bit but always does so with how it's scheduled. I don't track any of the other secondary tours as the quality just isn't there yet to warrant tracking and throwing the data. Maybe I ought to shove in the Japan events as they do have the quality there, but I'm not sure adding a single country series when there is a more regional event makes sense, as it in effect becomes a third tier of event. I do track the WDF (when I can get the data), but that's not a series so to speak, and I don't track the ADC as their structure really doesn't make sense to me in terms of what levels their events should track at, and a review of their website really doesn't help matters. Maybe I should add the global championship, but probably not, anyone worth tracking is likely playing the Challenge Tour as well. So which are the best?
ADA - Scoring at 84.21. That's a whole bunch of meh which equates to lower end of tour card holder quality. Raymond Smith is leading the pack with an 88 and Brody Klinge's about a point behind, but only Joe Comito and Tim Pusey have over 100 legs won (note for all of these, I only track from the quarter final stages onwards) and neither's actually breaking the tour average by more than a third of a point (heck, Comito is below the average).
Asian Tour - Actually worse at 84.03. There's some talent here, Ryuta Arihara who's had a great weekend just now is leading the way up with an 88 and Motomu Sakai and Man Lok Leung aren't too far behind, but nobody else is really tracking much better than the average, there's several names (which you'd probably guess) who are maybe a point or so above, but yeah, it's not quite as impressive as it might be.
CDC - We're only at six events (they've played seven but one was double in so no bueno), and this is the worst so far at 82.80. Maybe if Jim Long had have played a bit more this might be better but he's doing well on the main circuit so let's not stop him from doing that. Sevada's doing fine with an 87 and plenty of the usual suspects (Smith, Buntz, Cameron) are doing alright but worse than Sevada who's the only player with any sort of decent sample size. Maybe things pick up later in the season.
Challenge Tour - At 86.18. That's kind of what you would expect. The data is HUGELY spread out across so many players that it's hard to get a decent gauge on who's doing well with only Coulson, Hunt, Lishman, Kirk and Morris cracking 50 legs played. All these names are doing just fine (Coulson in particular is breaking 89) but yeah, hard to judge.
Development Tour - 85.65. That's pretty solid. Here you've got a bit more grouping, which is standard given you've got quite a lot of card holders playing these, Bates is doing the best with those over 50 legs, but Self, Gawlas, Bialecki (obviously), Drayton and Weber are all well outperforming the tour average and deserve credit.
Nordic/Baltic - 83.55. Yikes. Now here is where I would expect a bit more. Yes Razma is ranking blocked from playing in these, but Dekker is a card holder and he's only at 85. Labanauskas is the same, but at 84. Haavisto is having a nice resurgence, but again, 84. Larsson is 84. Tingstrom and Lukasiak aren't beating 83 between them. It doesn't seem that long ago that I was very bullish about the region's (and, in particular, Sweden's) darts, but now? Man it's regressed.
So that's the post. The regions are not really developing quite how I think many are hoping these tours would do, and with the worlds set up as is where everyone is fed to a top 64 player, it's pretty hard to see how any progress is really going to be made. We shall see, but I'm not optimistic.
