Section 14 - de Sousa, Smith, Evans, King, Hopp, Mathers

Meet your newest major winner. Jose de Sousa has gone from a dangerous opponent, who got kind of done over by the draw last season, to the latest Grand Slam champion who's playing at a level where he's a threat to win any tournament he enters. With some of the best outshots and counting in the game, de Sousa claimed his first major title by getting through an awkward group involving both Michael Smith and Krzysztof Ratajski, then eliminated Dave Chisnall, avenged a group defeat to Smith, before getting back to back 16-12 wins over Whitlock and Wade to claim the title. That's quite a long way from losing to Michael Barnard two years ago, and while he's still looking for his first win here after last season's defeat to Damon Heta (and a prelim loss some years ago to Devon Petersen), it's surely just a matter of time now. de Sousa made the Slam by winning Euro Tour 3, where he beat all the top three seeds (van Gerwen, Price, White) as well as Labanauskas and a domestic qualifier. Great performances, and more will surely be added.

Outside of his big wins, he made three tour finals, finishing with the highest average outside the big three on the Pro Tour, only being stopped in those by van Gerwen, Wright and Smith, which gave him a high seed for the PC Finals - there he lost out to Michael Smith in the last sixteen. In the European Championship he was logically seeded even higher, hit a nine in beating de Zwaan but would suffer a slightly surprising reverse to Jonny Clayton. de Sousa drew Wright in the first round of the Matchplay and Petersen at the same stage of the Grand Prix, tough draws (would have got van Gerwen if he beat Petersen as well), while perhaps the most surprising loss was at the UK Open, going out at the first hurdle to qualifier Lewy Williams. That's a long time ago now, and Price should be rightly concerned about a possible last sixteen match up - if they both get that far.

One possible last sixteen opponent is Ross Smith, who's had a pretty decent year in terms of results without ever really threatening to claim a first title, you don't finish fourth on the list of Pro Tour qualifiers by accident. The big result was clearly the last Euro Tour of the season - not qualifying for any of the previous events, Ross was able to go through Mario Vandenbogaerde with a remarkable 110+ average, win a decider against Gerwyn Price, then get past Max Hopp (who had oddly beaten de Sousa in the previous round for those who like that sort of thing) to reach the quarters, giving Joe Cullen a good game. That run got him to Oberhausen, where he got to a decider against Michael Smith, but just couldn't score in the last leg and went out in the first round. That was Ross's only major appearance outside of the easy two - suffering an odd loss to Jamie Lewis at the UK Open, but he got a major win over Nathan Aspinall at the Players Championship Finals, that being in the second round after routing Kim Huybrechts, he couldn't get past Damon Heta in round three but most people can't these days.

Elsewhere on the floor, Ross has been consistent - he had a bad run just prior to shutdown, but otherwise was very good at getting past the first opponent and further. Three quarter finals, a further three board wins and a further three board finals is all steady accumulation of ranking money. He has floor wins this season over Petersen, Hughes, Ratajski, de Sousa, Cullen, Cross, Price, Chisnall, Michael Smith - some of these more than once. We've seen that on his day he can beat anyone, he does have a TV victory over van Gerwen after all. Just a case of doing it here and not having the same sort of incredibly disappointing first round result like we saw this time last year.

Smith's opponent will be David Evans, who will make his PDC worlds debut after reaching the quarter final of the BDO event last year, and showing some form in the PDC beforehand with Challenge Tour results and getting into the later Pro Tour events, where he did grab the scalp of Gary Anderson. This year, after a surprisingly disappointing Q-School where he only really got going on day one, and nowhere near enough to get a card, just reaching the last 32, he is into the PDC worlds after winning the Challenge Tour. This will give David a tour card for the next two years, and it'll be interesting to see where he ends up on the Rob Cross to Michael Barnard scale of what he'll do with it. Evans won the tour primarily with two wins on the six event second group of events - getting wins in the finals over Chas Barstow and Richie Burnett, and had enough in the bank that he could afford to lose in the first round in the last two events and still make the worlds.

This gave David a ticket into the Winter Series - he didn't do a massive amount, but it's all experience and he was able to turn over Jonny Clayton in his best run to a board final, sticking around the low 90's level for all of the last three events, indeed, if Chisnall didn't average 121 against him, maybe he could have gone further than the last 32. Evans also got into the third Euro Tour event, by winning through the always tough associate members' qualifier, there he would get a win over the improving Kai Gotthardt, before running into Suljovic averaging a casual 105. This'll certainly be a tough game for both players.

Up and down year for Mervyn. Almost the year where he finally got a major title, by going on an amazing run in the Players Championship Finals. King went within one leg of the title having gone through an absurdly tough run of Dave Chisnall, Danny Noppert, Karel Sedlacek, Damon Heta and then Peter Wright, before coming up just short against Michael van Gerwen. It's maybe the best chance he'll have, and now just a few months away from 55, you wonder if it'll be his last chance. Regardless, outside of that he's had a few high spots - doing well in the first two European Tour events, going through Pipe, Durrant and Kleermaker in Belgium before the break, and Siepmann, Wattimena, van Gerwen and Wade afterwards, Wade additionally being the player he beat in the Grand Prix before coming up just short against Simon Whitlock.

Outside of that it's been somewhat slim pickings - only the two board wins on the Pro Tour saw him enter that final weekend with a seeding down in the 40's. While King didn't lose in the first round too often, there were just too many one and done or two and done events, and even in those two last sixteen runs, he didn't face the toughest opposition. King missed out on the Matchplay, was pretty poor in the UK Open against Joe Cullen, and averaged similarly poorly in the European Championship against Ian White as he had another exit at the first hurdle. The fifty grand he picked up most recently will keep his ranking going nicely for a while, but King will need to improve his floor efforts if he wants to stay seeded on the Pro Tour, otherwise it'll only get tougher and tougher.

Max has become somewhat of a forgotten man, it seems quite a while ago that he was winning on the Euro Tour, and it's only really that he's been able to get a free pass onto the Euro Tour (at least in Germany) that he's actually here, as without that eight grand he would have ended up well short in a year where he only reached the board final on the Pro Tour twice, not winning either of them. Let's talk about the good first - after being the beneficiary of a free pass to the Euro Tour while in Germany (along with Gabriel Clemens), he did make good use of it, first up beating Reece Robinson and Ian White before losing to Noppert, beating Pero Ljubic then losing to van der Voort, then arguably his best event was last when he beat Klaasen and de Sousa before falling to Ross Smith. This was more than enough money to get him into the European Championship - but he lost a decider against Jonny Clayton, going 5-3 up with a 170 out, he missed a dart at bull and a dart at tops to claim victory. That'd be the only time he's been in a major - he was in the last 64 of the UK Open by right, but withdrew.

It's the Pro Tour that's been the issue, and that's always been the issue. He only played 20 events, but went out in the first round eleven times, and only reached round three twice. That's an overall losing record, and some of his opponents weren't the greatest. He's had first round losses to Reece Robinson, Peter Jacques, Adam Hunt, Harald Leitinger, Robert Thornton - that's not the strongest list. Hopp ranks outside the top 64 on Pro Tour averages, and an overall points per turn in everything below 89 just isn't going to cut it. It's back to seeing flashes and just not seeing Max grind it out where it matters, he's simply not going to get into majors if he doesn't knuckle down and start producing.

Max has got a potential banana skin in the opening round in Gordon Mathers - the Australian returns for a second attempt, three years after falling to Seigo Asada in a deciding set in a preliminary round. The first international qualifier to make it after the DPA called off their season, Gordon was top of their rankings at the time and claims his spot as a result. In the events that have been held this year, Mathers was able to win one over Kyle Anderson, and reach the final of another, and is in a group of players just below the top two or three with a similar level of average. The Australian qualifiers have generally been solid, but if it's not someone like an Anderson or a Heta who we know is going to go on to try the Pro Tour and make it, then they've generally lacked the real power game to be able to keep the opponent under real pressure.

Mathers, however, did show intent by giving Q-School a go. He showed a good standard, generally in the mid-80's with a handful of games dropping a little bit lower and occasionally ending up a bit higher, managing to top 100 in his first game of the final day where he was able to push through to the last 64. He did end up quite high up in the averages of both Q-Schools combined, and stuck around for the first weekend of the Challenge Tour. Averaging just shy of 87 for those four events, he had a good run to the last sixteen in the first event, and an even better run to the semi finals of the third event, beating amongst others Robert Collins and James Richardson before falling to Matthew Dennant. This'd have been able to get him into a couple of the Pro Tours before the lockdown, and maybe the Summer Series as well - just a shame that Milton Keynes isn't right round the corner from Brisbane really. Should be a good game.

Section 13 - Price, Woodhouse, Lewis, Dolan, de Decker, Foulkes

Another excellent year for Price, who's now very much entrenched in the top three players in the world, and while the ordering of those three is arguable, Price is definitely one of them. The highlight was clearly Gerwyn's Grand Prix win, at least on a ranking basis having claimed the World Cup for Wales as well - it's probably fair to say he didn't have the trickiest run he could have, eliminating Wattimena, Huybrechts and de Zwaan to meet Dave Chisnall in the semi finals, where he was fortunate to win, and then Dirk van Duijvenbode in the finals. It's got the set play monkey off his back, and it wasn't the only success - Price took the Belgian Euro Tour event, not really being threatened at any stage, he claimed four Pro Tours, and also had a run to the UK Open final, only being challenged prior to that round by Gabriel Clemens, and had a solid run at the Players Championship Finals, only being stopped by the eventual winner in van Gerwen.

It's not been completely plain sailing - Danny Noppert did for him at the Matchplay which, while Noppert's a solid operator is still a bit of a surprise, and he was very fortunate to get through his Grand Slam group and then couldn't defend this title after Nathan Aspinall was a little bit better in the last sixteen. The Euro Tour could have been a little bit better, although while he lost early in three events, twice he went out to the eventual winner and Ross Smith was on fire in the third. Not a ranked event, but he'd also liked to have got to the Premier League playoffs, although that was a pretty weird league all round, prone to interruptions and the format change probably hurt Price more than most. Still, Gerwyn has to be rated as a real threat to go all the way here.

Luke Woodhouse had a breakout year in 2019, getting a string of good performances together culminating with some big major upsets right at the end of the year. 2020's not been as good, but his standard hasn't dropped off a huge amount and he's still a tricky opponent on his day. The best performance on TV (out of a choice of two) was most recently at the Players Championship Finals, where he got two good wins over Brendan Dolan and Andy Boulton, but would then suffer a bad loss to Dirk van Duijvenbode - not so much the loss, more the size of it, 10-1 is going to have hurt a lot. He's also made one good run to a Pro Tour quarter final, albeit it was the weakest one of the year (PC8), and he got through Arjan Konterman from the Challenge Tour, his first round opponent here, Mickey Mansell and Glen Durrant in a decider before, with the event looking winnable for anyone, going out to Derk Telnekes. He also had a bit of a good result on the Home Tour - hitting a nine on the second night in his 5-0 demolition job of Gerwyn Price. What he'd give to have that start in round two, if he gets there!

Elsewhere it's been a bit of a struggle - Luke made two Euro Tours, got one tricky draw in one in van Duijvenbode but had a real bad result in the other getting blown out by a domestic qualifier. He was ranked high enough to get a bye to the money round of the UK Open, but a loss against Josh Payne is one he'd probably want to have back, especially when it developed into an alright next round draw as well. The quarter final I mentioned on the Pro Tour was the only time Luke won his board - aside from the Autumn Series, where Luke had a bit of a bad spell, he's at least winning his first game, but running into troubles getting through that second game. It's mostly him hitting seeds or an otherwise good player, but it's hard to really advance your rankings significantly unless you can get up and around the top 32 on the Pro Tour rankings, which is held by exactly those players. Getting a first round win here would be useful.

Has this been a bad year for Jamie Lewis? Hard to say, you've got to take it in context and compare it with previous years, and he's had a tough time for quite a while now. At least he is back here after winning the PDPA qualifier, defeating Dave Pallett, Alan Tabern and then Robert Thornton in a close final which was scrappy at times, a key four leg run where Lewis finished in 15, 15, 12 and 14 to go from 4-2 down to one leg away being the difference, showing a bit of what we know Jamie can do but what has been increasingly rare in recent times. He's indicated he's wanting to take a bit of a break, and did miss the Winter Series and the back end of the Autumn Series, maybe that's done him some good.

Got to look realistically at how he's played though, and it's not great. He got a good win against Ross Smith at the UK Open before going out to Mensur Suljovic, and he beat two other Smiths (Jeff, Michael) along with Antonio Alcinas in his best run of the year in Players Championship 5, stopped only by Gerwyn Price. But aside from that, he's had just two wins all season, one against Cullen is nice, the other against Gary Blades. In fairness, looking at his Pro Tour games he's had frequent tough draws, but you'd have thought he might have nicked one or two in the early part of the year. Then there's his sole Euro Tour appearance, and the less said about that the better. He'll need to beat Price and probably someone else to retain his card, so I guess we hope that either a win at Q-School will give Lewis confidence back, or a year on the Challenge Tour will allow for a bit of a break and give time to rebuild that way.

Nice year on the floor for Brendan, who continues to put up very solid performances in this renaissance of his career. His floor consistency has been remarkable, and apart from a block of three losses at the start of the Autumn Series, Brendan won his first round game every time but once, has reached the board final more than half the time, and has plenty of deep runs which, despite a more or less complete absence from the Euro Tour where he went out first round to the surprise package of Franz Roetzsch, is keeping him up in the seeds and landed him nearly in the top 10 seeds for the Players Championship Finals. The best run was to the final in PC7, beating Wade and Chisnall on the way before losing to Nathan Aspinall, but he has three further semi finals as well, and just in those he's beaten van Gerwen, Cross and Heta. His scoring is up high enough to be a consistent threat and if he gets to the last 32, Price can't afford to take him lightly.

He'd like to have done a bit more in the majors though, he did get that good seed at the PC Finals but ran into another potential round three opponent in Luke Woodhouse who did little wrong, Brendan averaging 97 not being enough. Similarly in the UK Open, he averaged 95 and won nine legs - Jamie Hughes averaged five points more and took one leg more. He got in the two "tricky" majors to qualify for, very high up in the Pro Tour ranks, while van Gerwen would be too much in the Matchplay, maybe he could have done more against Kim Huybrechts in the Grand Prix. It also looks like Brendan missed a match dart against Chisnall which would have got him into the Grand Slam - unfortunate if that's accurate. I'm not sure Dolan has the greatest ceiling, but his floor level of performance is high enough to get him out of quite a lot of awkward spots.

One potential opponent for Brendan is Mike de Decker, who's making his world championship debut having got in through the lower end of the Pro Tour rankings. Mike, who'll turn 25 in a few days, increased the Belgian representation on the Pro Tour after winning his card back in January, claiming a card outright on day two by winning nine matches, including over the occasionally decent Szekely, card holder Kleermaker, the increasingly dangerous Kevin Doets and youth phenom Justin van Tergouw, before knocking out the veteran Swede Dennis Nilsson in the final. Once getting on the tour, Mike's been putting up consistent numbers, albeit not getting any headline-grabbing results, with just the two major appearances, only the one Euro Tour on home soil where he beat Ron Meulenkamp before giving van Gerwen a decent game, and hasn't managed to reach the quarter final stages on the Pro Tour, although he did manage that in his previous tour card run when he was a lot younger.

His majors saw him get wins over Lisa Ashton and Daniel Larsson to cash the UK Open, but would lose a decider to William Borland the round before all the big guns came in, and while he made the Players Championship Finals, he was a pretty low seed and ended up losing in the first round to Jose de Sousa. He has two board wins on the Pro Tour, both in the Summer Series, the second was more or less nice draws but in the first he had to go through Jason Lowe and Devon Petersen, which isn't bad. He's won his opening game more often than he's lost, and over the course of the year he's additionally got wins over Danny Noppert, Jeffrey de Zwaan, Joe Cullen, Dave Chisnall and Jamie Hughes, all of which are seeded here. He's been around enough to gain a lot of experience here, and has a better chance than many of getting an alright run.

Edward Shoji Foulkes. Interesting name, and not one that people might have expected to qualify - especially given that in the event he would come up against the strong favourite Seigo Asada in the semi finals. In a race to four, Asada would win the first three legs, but then Seigo would lose his scoring, Edward would get some well timed big scores, Seigo would miss a dart at bull for the match, continue to fail to score - at one point scoring five which Edward replied to with a max, then it's 3-3 and steady one treble a visit play got Edward to a finish first, and double twelve would push him into the final. Edward would come from 4-2 down to Akihito Morita here to claim his spot, dodging three match darts which should have been more. Edward also beat Mikuru Suzuki in the earlier rounds.

A final average of 80 isn't great, but it's all we've really got to go off in terms of reads. There is no dartsdatabase page for him. The Japanese federation page has no info on him. I can't see any Asian Tour records, Youtube searches are coming up pretty much blank apart from this qualifier. I'm struggling here. It looks like he should have enough to give Mike a decent game, but de Decker should be that little bit too strong really.

Section 12 - White, Huybrechts, Zhuang, de Zwaan, Searle, Lauby

 

Not sure if this has been a good year for White. His record isn't too bad - he's picked up another tour title, albeit this was the dodgy one that was right before everything went to shit, and he played extremely well in that one, averaging 102 in every game apart from the semi final (oddly enough against a potential initial opponent), already had another final in the bank before then, and made another major quarter final, picking up an impressive win in the process. Statistically, he's also still right up there. I just get the feeling he's declining slightly, and we may already have seen the best out of him. He can prove me wrong and finally go on a big run here, and the draw's pretty favourable to do so, but will he break what's been a pretty barren streak at Ally Pally?

It's a little bit of a worry that on the Euro Tour he went our first round three times, to van Duijvenbode, Hopp and Noguera. It's a bit of a worry that he only just crept through in the Slam via the backdoor and then was heavily outplayed, and that when he had a chance to go deep in the Players Championship Finals, he lost a close one to Joe Cullen, who he whitewashed on TV in 2019. Opening round losses in majors to Cullen (again) and Clayton, while not bad players, are the sorts that he should beat. Can't blame him going out to Wright in the UK Open. That he's only won his board once in the last seven Players Championships isn't a great sign of improving form, and all his losses were to players that you wouldn't really consider top tier. He is 50 now, so it's not unreasonable to think he might decline a bit and maybe his best chances are already behind him.

By contrast, it's not been a terrible year for Kim Huybrechts as he looks to try to claw his way back into the top 32 in the world. Finishing pretty high up on the Pro Tour rankings, he made two semi finals - the one we just described where he lost to White, after whitewashing Peter Wright and defeating Michael Smith, then also made the semi final in the last event of the year, beating four players who will appear here before running out of steam against Ratajski. Kim's been doing enough that he was able to creep into the Grand Prix after missing out on the Matchplay by a small margin, and was able to grab a win against Brendan Dolan before drawing dead against Gerwyn Price, and has also shown up in all the other majors mentioned except the Grand Slam, where he lost in the qualifiers to Ricky Evans after missing match darts.

Consistency's the key though. If he wants to get into more majors he'll need to win his board more than twice all year. He's hit probably more than his fair share of good opponents when losing, sure, but you've got to pull the upset off occasionally. He's probably got to do more in majors and the Euro Tour once there - losing to James Wade in the UK Open is fine, but losing 10-1 maybe not so much. Joe Cullen and Jeffrey de Zwaan aren't the hardest seeds he could have met at the Euro Tour. Can't do much against Price at Oberhausen, but Ross Smith was a winnable match at the Players Championship Finals, and he didn't get it done. Still something there, just needs to appear at the latter stages more often if he is going to get back into the seeds for here next year.

Here we've got the second of two Chinese qualifiers, Zhuang winning the second of the two events to make his debut here. Much like his compatriot Liu, we don't know much about him, the qualifiers being shrouded in some mystery, We don't even have anything to read from the World Cup - he was part of the team, but someone messed up the travel documents somewhere and they couldn't board the plane. Looking back through the qualifier for that event, Zhuang was averaging anywhere between 78 and 84, and did beat the other guy that's here on the way, which is a little better than I expected, but only managed 70-something in the final of the qualifier he won, which didn't have great numbers of players, only having sixteen turn up apparently.

Zhuang has tried to qualify a couple of times before at least, not getting past the semi final stage, which is a bit of a concern, and given that his previous worlds qualification attempts predate the first Shanghai Masters, that he didn't make the field in any of them is kind of worrying about how good he actually is. His opponent only averaged 70 in the final. Surely just going to be making up the numbers unfortunately.

It's been a tricky year for de Zwaan, but it's also been a bit fortunate in some ways - while he has been struggling with an injury for the early part of the year, which saw him pull out of the Home Tour, and generally struggle with consistency and quality - he finished well outside the top 64 of the Pro Tour averages, is below 90 in points per turn, and only won his board twice, the semi final coming way back in Players Championship 3, he's also got some alright results in the big events where it mattered. The key one was the Grand Prix - he shouldn't have been there, but got a call up as an alternate after Stephen Bunting got screwed, but made the most of it with a quarter final run, knocking out Jamie Hughes and Gabriel Clemens before being eliminated in the quarters by the eventual finalist. Jeffrey would additionally get a couple of wins at the Players Championship Finals against Darren Webster (this time playing against the alternate, not being the alternate, his original opponent of Suljovic withdrawing) and Wayne Jones before again hitting the eventual winner, but he did give van Gerwen a decent game.

Everything else was a bit weak though. He ought to be beating the likes of Whitlock at the UK Open. Couldn't do much at the Matchplay, Durrant was inspired on the day. He only just crept into the European Championship on the back of winning one game in Belgium, and got de Sousa as a result. He lost to Matt Edgar trying to qualify for the Grand Slam. It's more the nature of who he's lost to on the floor. Telnekes, North, Stevenson, van de Pas, Collins, Hunt, Telnekes again, Brooks, Murray - that's a string of players he ought to be getting wins against most of the time. A win here would help to restore a bit of confidence, he's an incredibly talented player on his day and this'd kick start his 2021 nicely.

One player who isn't exactly short of confidence is Ryan Searle. After making some waves this time last year with a high quality game against Gary Anderson where he was up three sets to one, Ryan made his big breakthrough by winning Players Championship 3 - beating van Gerwen in the final, his potential round two opponent in the semi final, as well as Durrant, Michael Smith and Price along the way. Not a bad run of players to go through. Generally putting up excellent numbers, if it wasn't for that win he might well have been the most underrated player on the circuit, a huge upturn after a frankly disastrous back end to 2019 on the floor.

That win opened up a few things for Searle in terms of majors - he got his semi final just before the Grand Prix and got into it, and was a bit unfortunate to lose out in a tight game to Danny Noppert in the opening round. The money gave Searle a good seeding at the Players Championship Finals, and he was very impressive against Dimitri van den Bergh in the opening round before losing out to an equally impressive Callan Rydz. He ended up being the final automatic qualifier for the Grand Slam, and had a great chance to make it out of the group, in a winner takes all game against Gary Anderson, he averaged 102 but just fell short. Not bad results at all, great performances, next year he could do with a bit of a better run in terms of Europe to solidify a position on the top 32 of the Pro Tour rankings to grab more major appearances.

We've got a debutant for Searle's first opponent, and it's the American Danny Lauby, the 27 year old making his debut having won the CDC Continental Cup, in lieu of the North American Championship not being held. This was held in late 2019, and he defeated Joe Chaney, Kiley Edmunds and Gary Mawson in the final. Lauby, who we saw finish fourth in the series of CDC events which saw Danny Baggish get back to Ally Pally, was also seen as one half of this year's World Cup Team, where they lost in the first round to Austria, and has been seen on our TV screens before in 2018, where he took James Wade to a deciding leg in the US Darts Masters.

Danny's certainly taking his game seriously, and has tried Q-School the last two seasons. Two years back he was one game away from actually winning a card - losing out to Scott Baker in the final qualifying round, but couldn't really get anything going in any of the other days. This year was kind of similar - he got off to a great start to get two games away from a card, beating David Evans in a decider in his best game where he averaged 94, unfortunately losing to Steve Brown, and averaged 85 for the whole of Q-School - but just couldn't get many more results, only reaching the last 128 on day two and not any further after that, to just come up short. Good to see ambition, even first round loss money should allow him to try again this year and ideally attempt some of the early Challenge Tour events as a minimum.

Section 11 - Wade, Rydz, Bailey, Bunting, Boulton, Hedman

James Wade continues to stay extremely relevant in the top echelons of the darting scene, and while he's a fair way off the top three, and probably a bit off the next tier of players just below that, he certainly has enough of a game to threaten anyone - which is why he's managed to get into two major finals this season, a real nice return. The first was the European Championship - defeating Lennon, Aspinall, O'Connor and Petersen before Peter Wright was too good in the final - not the hardest run you could ever have, but needed a couple of good performances. The second was in the Slam - Wade won a potentially easy group including Durrant, Heta and Wattimena undefeated, then in the knockout stages took out Ian White, Heta again then won a decider against van den Bergh before de Sousa was too strong in the final. Those results will keep him up in the rankings for a good while.

Elsewhere, Wade made two Pro Tour finals - winning one in the summer and losing one before the restart, didn't do a great deal in Europe, suffered a surprise reverse in the first round of the Players Championship to Zonneveld, got a tricky draw in the first round of the Grand Prix and went out to Jonny Clayton, was oddly forced to overtime in the Matchplay by Keegan Brown, while he got through that he was edged out by Gary Anderson in the second round, and also had an easy enough draw in the first couple of rounds in the UK Open before hitting Michael van Gerwen and going out. Overall, seems a pretty good season - nothing devastatingly bad happened, and outperformed what most people thought he would do.

It's a second worlds for Callan, and his first as a tour card holder - he got here last year through the Challenge Tour and made a bit of an impression, and that also gave him his tour card. I think it's fair to say that it took Callan a bit longer to get used to the tour than many thought - losing his first seven games, and then managed to beat a couple of qualifiers in the UK Open to just make the money before losing to Matt Edgar. But then he started to improve slowly but surely throughout the course of the year, put up averages that saw him end up in the top 20 on the Pro Tour, and enter this worlds as one of the in form players of the season. That said, it nearly wasn't to be, as it took Rydz until the latter half of the Winter Series to punch his ticket as one of the last few qualifiers, only having £1k from the Euro Tour to add to whatever he'd make in the Pro Tour.

The key event was PC21 - Callan defeated Kantele, Gurney, Dolan, Whitlock and White to reach the semi finals, where Damon Heta would be a bit too good, but it was a huge run to put three grand onto his account and make himself pretty much safe for two majors. Rydz added a bit of security by making the last sixteen of the final event, his second best performance of the year, joint with one board being won in each of the first two series of the season. The major he'd get in was the Players Championship Finals - there Rydz showed his form by eliminating Daryl Gurney and Ryan Searle, before taking Peter Wright all the way to a deciding leg, unfortunately being unable to finish in 18 darts which would have been enough to win the match. Still, it's all experience, he's a huge 180 hitter and will certainly be a threat to anyone.

This'll be James Bailey's second appearance at the worlds, returning after a year's break where he'll look to do a bit better than last time, where he lost in straight sets to Steve Lennon, albeit he did at least take a leg in every set. The Australian qualifiers have usually been fairly competent, so Callan certainly won't be able to take James lightly, particularly given he's got previous experience on this stage. As with most non-tour card holders, it's a bit tricky to work out where James is at, and he got his qualifying berth by finishing high enough in the DPA circuit (behind Gordon Mathers, who had the main DPA spot, and Damon Heta, who clearly didn't need one) following the cancellation of the Oceanic Masters.

Bailey only averaged 80 in his previous appearance, but that's probably a bit misleading, Lennon certainly wasn't helping him that much. Let's look at what DPA events we did see him in - he broke 90 in getting to the semis of the last event, was around the mid-80's in the first event of that season, was at a similar level in event 10 (of 14) of their season, and finished with a tour long average of 83, at least in the events that were held in 2020. He's seemingly had a few matches where he didn't need to do that much to beat a weaker opponent, who dragged James down a little bit, so maybe that 83 is misleading as well. Rydz should be favourite, but isn't a certainty.

It's a bit of a worrying time for Bunting, with Stephen being quite a way off the world's top sixteen, and also not being close enough to make any majors apart from the Minehead double, the one that everyone makes, and the one that half the tour makes (and in that one he lost to Ryan Murray in the first round). Yes, he got fucked over at the Grand Prix, having not quite picked up enough cash to make the Matchplay, so that list of DNP's isn't quite as bad as it makes out, and "making" the second of the two events when they're fairly close in cutoffs and having exactly the same qualifying criteria, indicates that Bunting was doing something right to trend back upwards a little bit.

This seems true enough - he was pretty god damned awful at the end of 2019, but picked up one semi final just before the break, couldn't get quite enough to get to Blackpool, but added another quarter in the Summer Series, and then in the Autumn Series made another semi final, pushing him nicely up the rankings. He'd nearly get to the quarters of the UK Open, beating van der Voort in a decider, putting in a huge performance against Alan Tabern, and only losing to Rob Cross by a single break. Stephen's not defending much money here, so has a chance to claw back some places with a not-terrible draw.

Stephen will have his work cut out though, as a potential first round opponent is Andy Boulton, who has been putting up comparable statistics, albeit with a bit of a higher floor and lower ceiling, and who's picked his game up towards the end of the season. The big one, which secured Boulton's worlds spot when it was in a bit of doubt, was a semi final in the very last event of the season - where he defeated Tabern, Wade, Lowe, van Duijvenbode and Wright, before Joe Cullen was a bit too good, but the money was in the bank, and should be enough to see him keep his card next season. It'll be Boulton's third appearance here, last season he lost a close one to Danny Baggish where the first four sets all went to deciders, and he also appeared through the PDPA qualifier four years earlier, beating Per Laursen but losing to eventual winner Gary Anderson.

Boulton's major performances have been fine - it's just been the two automatic ones, recently he beat Ryan Joyce but lost to Luke Woodhouse, and in the UK Open at the start of the year he eliminated three players to reach the last 32, only losing out to Gabriel Clemens. He could improve next season a bit - his start of the year on the floor was weak, only winning the one match before the shutdown, so a lot of the bad results will be off the record, so getting some confidence here should set him up nicely for 2021. Just improve in European qualification and get a good start, and who's to say the Matchplay wouldn't be a possibility?

When the PDC announced the Women's Series, and indicated that there'd be two spots for qualification, I think most people thought that, with no Suzuki there, it'd probably be Ashton and Sherrock that'd qualify. Ashton did, but Deta Hedman was able to get into the second spot in a dramatic final event, which saw everyone trying to work out what the tiebreakers actually were, then work out what would apply, then seeing that Hedman had crept in just about. Deta made a semi in the first event (losing to Sherrock), won the second again over Sherrock before de Graaf in the final, lost in the final of the third to Ashton before getting just enough legs in a quarter final loss to Sherrock to qualify. Averaging just a shade under 80 in the series (only Sherrock and Ashton managed higher), it's a competent standard and you would think Hedman will have what crowd there is on her side.

Hedman's obviously got decades of experience in the ladies' game and their worlds, and has played PDC majors before, cashing the 2005 UK Open where she made history by picking up two wins in that event - but this will be her first worlds of this type, which will still be a little bit of a new experience, and with the almost complete decimation of the ladies' game (if anything happened after the Dutch Open where Deta made the semis, I missed it), it's hard to say how much rust there will be. Hedman did some due diligence and played four Challenge Tour events this year (she tried Q-School, but didn't really threaten at all), picking up some wins over veterans such as Colin Osborne, Cody Harris, Kevin Painter (all in one event, losing in the last sixteen to David Evans) and Jamie Clark. She'll have prepared right for this, and who knows? Anything can happen.

Section 10 - Ratajski, Joyce, Sedlacek, Whitlock, Labanauskas, Liu

Another solid year for Krzysztof, who continues to eliminate doubters and solidify his position in the world's top sixteen, moving up six seeds from last year, it's arguable based on statistics that Ratajski has a top ten game, and has had a very nice floor season, the only thing that's been really preventing him from powering up the rankings has been unfortunate draws, as away from TV he's as good as anyone. Three more finals this season - that's what you'd expect from someone in the top 10 of the Pro Tour average list, his most recent final was in the last event of the season where he lost to Cullen, he lost a final to Price in the last event of the Autumn Series, and got his win early on in the season with a deciding leg win over Ian White. Three quarter finals in Europe, only being stopped by Wright, Petersen and Suljovic seems about par for the course, but let's address the major events.

UK Open - Ratajski did nothing wrong here. He averaged 105 over 19 legs against Chris Dobey, who was doing the same and won the decider. The Matchplay was a good event - Ratajski made the quarters, beating Wattimena and Clemens, only losing out by a small margin to Michael Smith. Then it's bad draws - van Gerwen in the Grand Prix, he got it to a decider, can't do much more. Euro Champs was a slip up to West and the PC Finals was similar to potential opening opponent Karel Sedlacek, but his Grand Slam group was horrible, getting both Michael Smith hitting form and Jose de Sousa. At some point, he'll get the win in a big event that he can do, this isn't a bad section of the draw, so who's to say he can't advance as far as Peter Wright?

Good year for Joyce. Very good year. Mainly because he got a perfectly timed first Pro Tour win, which may end up being more important for Ryan's career than his quarter final two years ago. He's defending a lot of money, but has gained a lot of match experience and TV experience, and is playing pretty solidly throughout the season. The win wasn't a complete fluke, he was able to make another quarter final and two more board wins, so he's been picking up decent results throughout. Let's talk about the win - after a couple of routine victories over Mickey Mansell and Robert Collins, he'd win his board over van der Voort, take out the surprising Nick Kenny, before a last eight run over Clemens, Noppert and Chisnall in a deciding leg. Nicely done.

The win opened up everything, so his only major wasn't the UK Open where he lost to Gabriel Clemens. It got Ryan to the Matchplay, and lost a scrappy match against Whitlock, he was also in the Grand Prix where he had the win of his career (arguably) over Peter Wright where he couldn't miss a double, and nearly took Chisnall down in the next round as well. Europe was a trainwreck, but he qualified for the Grand Slam (the PC win wasn't quite enough), and had his chances against Price to advance, but Gerwyn powered away in the last three legs and denied him in a decider. Ryan would get a deceptively tricky draw in the PC Finals and lose to Andy Boulton, so not the greatest end to the season, but it's tough to say he's done anything wrong this season. If he doesn't use the Tetris shirt at the worlds, that'd be the first thing.

Sedlacek returns for a second stab at the worlds after a one year absence, after coming through the PDPA qualifier with a 19-4 run in legs against Rodriguez, van de Pas and Dekker, taking all the confidence he had from his best run of his career just a few days earlier with a last sixteen run in the Players Championship Finals. Getting a landmark win over Krzysztof Ratajski, then following up with a victory over Madars Razma, before losing to Mervyn King, Karel was able to bank a fair bit of cash after an alright first season, following winning his tour card at the start of the year outright on day 3. Karel needed a late run on the final day to make that finals event, winning his board for the fourth time this year, and could have made the worlds outright if he'd have beaten Daryl Gurney, but hey, he's here now.

What else? Ignoring his amazing shirt for a minute, as mentioned Karel's won his board four times, once at the end of the Autumn Series (ironically beating Ryan Joyce in the process), again at the start of the same series, beating Cross, who he also beat in his first last sixteen run of the season, so there's a fair bit of consistency here. He cashed the UK Open after whitewashing Adam Hunt and only dropping two legs to Barrie Bates, not having the greatest game against Joe Murnan which would have set up a winnable game in the last 64, but getting the money on the board his fine. Nothing in Europe is a shame which would have boosted his stage experience, losing out on the Prague event clearly hurt, but next season that'll hopefully change. Averaging solidly, he'll be an underdog, but he's certainly dangerous and not a player that Ryan can take lightly. 

A bit of a resurgence this year from Simon Whitlock. If you'd have told me that he'd make two major semi finals, I'd have thought you were nuts. If you told me he'd have beaten van Gerwen to make both of those, as well as knocking him out the Matchplay to make the quarters, I'd have collapsed. But he's had a return to good results on TV, and good fortune as well - he only just crept into the Matchplay as the last seed, and wouldn't have been close on the Pro Tour results. But he did, beat Joyce and then MvG, before Gary Anderson would be a bit too good. Next up was the Grand Prix - he shouldn't even have been in the event, but Lewis got screwed and Whitlock took full advantage to beat Dobey, King and van Gerwen, before dropping in form somewhat and losing to van Duijvenbode. He didn't do much wrong at all at the Slam, probably his best result of the year, de Sousa was too good in the semi final, but Jose was too good for everyone that week.

Outside of those three big runs, it's been OK, European Tour excepted which was a big zero. UK Open saw him beat de Zwaan before running into a very good Chris Dobey, and with a middling seed in the Players Championship Finals, he won an effective final against Adrian Lewis before hitting Peter Wright. His floor form early in the season followed what it was like in 2019, namely not great, but it picked up from the autumn onwards - the second of the three series saw three board wins, which included the two quarter final runs Simon managed this year, and he tacked on another board win in the final run of the season, hitting some bad draws and players hitting good scoring early which really stifled his opportunities. Real solid 2020, he's got a dangerous combination of stage experience and good fortune right now.

A quarter finalist last year, Darius returns for a third straight appearance at Ally Pally, for once he's not facing Matt Edgar, and has been up and down this year, so defending a chunk of his money will be fairly useful. The highlight of Labanauskas' season would be a pair of quarter final runs - the most important of which would be in the third European Tour event, where he won over Michael Unterbuchner, Dave Chisnall and Joe Cullen, before running into eventual winner Jose de Sousa. That five grand would be enough to get him into the European Championship, such was the level of truncation to the season, but only to draw van Gerwen and lose 6-1 (averaging 100 in the process though). That one result was half of what you'd need to make the worlds, so what was otherwise a fairly quiet season could be gotten away with.

Let's talk about that floor form - Darius averaged well, but remarkably only had one board win - a quarter final result in PC20 with wins over Penhall, Clayton, Woodhouse and Kciuk before the average collapsed against van der Voort, and he'll probably want that back. However, he's good enough to really be getting more than just that board win. His scoring is indicative of that, and in his board finals he didn't face unbeatable opponents that often. Similar with the UK Open - Dirk van Duijvenbode wasn't the easiest of draws, but it was a winnable match. Still, his first round game is doable, and he's not got the toughest of seeds, so maybe Darius can go on a bit of a run for a third straight year.

The Chinese qualifiers over the years have been of mixed quality - in the early days, they've been pretty mediocre, but in the last few years they've improved a fair bit, with the young kid who played last year looking easily the best they've had. This year, they have two players due to the qualifying system collapsing, and Liu got through the first qualifier held in China, where he averaged 87 in the final, so not a bad standard of play, but we don't know a great deal beyond that.

Interestingly, this isn't his debut, and he made his previous appearance fifteen years ago - losing in the opening round 3-0 to John Part averaging a fraction over 80. He's also played a couple of World Series events when they were still held in Shanghai, losing 6-0 to each of Cross and van Barneveld. He might not be a complete mug, but Darius should have little trouble in this one, one would think that not playing the Asian Tour, at least the last time out, shows a lack of ambition and anyone who could beat Darius, or at least challenge, would be showing up to some of them.

Section 9 - Wright, West, Gilitwala, Clemens, Hamilton, Kurz

 

Your current world champion will be looking to defend his title from the number 2 seed, but how was his inaugural season as the winner of the biggest event the sport? Hit and miss really. Peak was to claim another major title by claiming the European Championship, an early semi final in Belgium being enough to get him into the field (which would allow him to withdraw from the last two Euro Tours). Wright won it by defeating Gabriel Clemens, Gerwyn Price (only playing a truncated season gave him a fairly low seeding, hence the early meeting), then the run arguably got easier with wins over possible first opponent Steve West, then Jonny Clayton and James Wade. Four Pro Tour titles is a decent enough haul, winning two against Price and one each against de Sousa and Madars Razma. But could he have done more?

Maybe. He'd definitely want that semi final in the PC Finals against Mervyn King back. Whether he'd beat van Gerwen in the final is a different question, but an 84 average is way below par. He had an easily winnable group in the Grand Slam, but had a really poor game against Devon Petersen which he needed to win having already lost to Dirk van Duijvenbode, and didn't even finish second. The UK Open would have been open, but having done the hard part by beating Durrant and White he then lost to Gurney despite averaging 101. Durrant would do for him in the Matchplay which at the time is understandable, but a loss in the opening round of the Grand Prix to Ryan Joyce was a huge shock, although Joyce was missing next to nothing. Perhaps it's a greedy assessment, but maybe a bit more could have been expected. Still, a major title is never a bad result given how competitive the game is these days.

Thank god for the European Tour is probably what Steve West is thinking. After a pretty darned disastrous Pro Tour season, where West didn't win his board once and had a shocking fifteen first round defeats, to some pretty ordinary players as well (Darren Penhall, Brian Raman, Gavin Carlin, Dave Pallett, John Michael, Ciaran Teehan etc), Steve would finish outside the top 60 on the averages, not make the Players Championship Finals, and only win eleven matches all season - four of which were in the first three events, making up two of his three board finals. It's a long way away of Steve's best - he was seeded last season.

However, Europe recovered things somewhat. Making three events and hitting a last sixteen in Belgium early in the year was enough to get him to Oberhausen - there, West would pull off two big last leg shocks, first against Krzysztof Ratajski, all eleven legs going with throw where Krzysztof missed eight darts to break throughout the match. Second would be against Mensur Suljovic, pulling out a 106 out to break in the decider. Peter Wright would be too strong, but hey, it's a result, and he'd also do slightly better than seeded (being just outside the top 32 at the time) in the UK Open, winning over Conan Whitehead and Lewis Williams, but would be spanked 10-1 by Jelle Klaasen. Tough one. Suppose it's comforting that his best results have been on stage, and he's at least got a winnable game here.

This is an odd one. The last couple of seasons, we've actually had an Indian qualifier, and Nitin Kumar played both times. He didn't look great the first time, but was a lot better the second time round, and has been playing some of the Asian Tour, has tried Q-School and then the Challenge Tour, and is quite clearly the country's number one player. However, for reasons that you can go down a Twitter rabbit hole to find if you want, Indian darting politics is best described as "lol", and in the absence of a qualifier they picked their number one on their rankings, which is Amit. Oh dear.

We don't know a great deal about him recently. He's still fairly young at least - he was at least young enough to play two Development Tour weekends in 2018, where he finished with a 6-8 record, averaging in the sixties overall and only just scraping over 80 once. In that year he also played Q-School, where he won one game over the four days, and tried two Challenge Tour weekends, not winning a game the first weekend and being one and out for three of the events in the second weekend. Doesn't look like this one will be pretty.

Any questions that Clemens is Germany's number one player have pretty much fallen by the wayside now, the only real thing holding things back was Hopp having a higher ranking, which certainly isn't the case anymore, and while Gabriel is yet to win a ranking title, it can only be a matter of time given the consistent level of play he's been able to produce. He's also starting to get wins on TV as well, which we'll come to shortly, but let's mention the floor first - two Pro Tour semi finals (halted only by Aspinall and van Gerwen), a further three quarter finals, and extremely steady production throughout. It's maybe a bit of a surprise that Clemens wasn't able to get through to the Sunday of any Euro Tour events (he was invited straight into the first round of three of them, so didn't even need to qualify), but no first round exits isn't bad, and apart from the Gurney game in the second event, he was facing either a top ranked player statistically (Ratajski) or someone averaging 100 (Wade, Suljovic). The big run will come.

TV results are improving though. In the UK Open, Clemens got past Kuivenhoven, Joyce and then Boulton before going to a decider against Gerwyn Price, who broke with an eleven for perfect timing, he'd take out Rob Cross at the Matchplay and push Ratajski to overtime, and he'd take out Nathan Aspinall at the Grand Prix before putting in a disappointing performance against Jeffrey de Zwaan. He got Wright at the Euros and ran into a rampant Ian White at the Players Championship Finals, so can probably be excused those, but the real disappointment will be the Grand Slam - needing just three legs against Adam Hunt, he lost five in a row from a 2-0 lead. That'd have given him a very winnable match against Simon Whitlock. Small margins, but now he's in the top 32 he needs to push into the top 16 of majors frequently, if not further, to advance. Still, it's all more progression.

The Hammer's back after a couple of years in the BDO system, and will be just about back at Ally Pally after creeping into the field via the Pro Tour list. It was looking very dicey on the final day - winning just one game in the last three days would have given him quite a bit more leeway, but results fell Andy's way and he will make it back. It's ironically a bit of a similar story to Steve West really - his Pro Tour results have been extremely poor, landing outside the top 100 on the averages, only reaching a board final once (over van den Bergh and Sedlacek), and losing in the first round more than he's won. It was such a mediocre record that he didn't make the Players Championship Finals, and wasn't close to it at all, and a return to the UK Open was ended a round prior to the money by Niels Zonneveld.

However, there was the European Tour. Having won his opening round game against Andy Boulton (in a decider) in Belgium before losing comfortably to Peter Wright, he had an outside chance of Oberhausen in the final event of the season. He beat a domestic qualifier first up (of which there was a lot), then dodged three match darts against Stephen Bunting before edging through, again in a decider. He actually managed to push van Gerwen close in round three as well, missing a dart at the bull for the match, but it was enough - first to make the European Championship, where he'd win just the one leg against Devon Petersen, but critically, it got the money in the bank to make this event. He's going to need to improve to retain a card next year, but it's not a bad start cash wise to make two majors.

Hamilton's going to have a tough task to get through to Clemens though, as another rising German will be his opponent in Nico Kurz. Nico debuted last year and had a routine win over James Wilson before pulling off a fair shock against Joe Cullen (I was there, it was a fun match), before Luke Humphries was a bit too strong. Nico qualified here by winning the German Superleague - retaining the title that got him to Ally Pally last year, and while the event was mostly notable for the legend that was the lollipop bloke keeping distancing, the standards in the group stages being pretty ordinary, Nico brought out his best in the knockout stages - first eliminating former worlds player Kevin Münch (he who beat Lewis a few years ago), then potential second round opponent Clemens before winning a decider 10-9 against another former worlds qualifier, Dragutin Horvat. He was in quite a hole down 8-4, but held his nerve and survived a match dart to get over the line.

Nico's played a couple of the European Tour events this year, beating Lowe then losing to Wade in ET2, then beating Stefan Bellmont before losing to Durrant in ET3. Just making it through the huge qualifier in Riesa would have got him into the European Championship, but he bizarrely didn't show and get any of the eight places available. Oh well, at least it's believed he will do Q-School properly this year (he only did the one day in 2020, supposedly he didn't want to do the full tour), which will be good as he's clearly good enough to make it as a card holder.

Section 8 - Durrant, Beaton, Portela, Lewis, Heta, Baggish

Up and down year for Glen really. He started off the year as he finished the last one, looking very much like a top 10 player, seemingly being worthy of in the discussion of Premier League quality, a tournament he would eventually win, and reaching another major semi final. Then Glen was ill for a while, coinciding with a positive Covid test, which caused him to miss the European Champimonship, and he's not really looked himself since, looking well off the pace in the Winter Series, where he suffered four first round defeats and only just picking up two decider wins in the remaining event, was just as far off in the Grand Slam where he picked up just four legs and averaged below 90 in every game, even below 80 in the first, and then went out in the first round of the Players Championship to Wayne Jones, albeit his average was back up at 95 in that one. That's the big question - what condition is Durrant in? Hopefully he has had time to properly recover and get on the practice board, as such it's a bit unfortunate that he's been drawn on day 2 of the worlds, every bit of extra time would have been useful.

Before then, it was great - the very worst he did in the first 8 Pro Tour events was a last 32, making two quarters, and he continued that to start the Summer Series with another two quarter finals in the first two days, and would tack on another quarter final in the Autumn Series. Prior to the shutdown he'd done enough to go top of the Premier League, he was unfortunate to draw Peter Wright first up in the UK Open, and of course he would have the Matchplay run where eliminated de Zwaan, avenged the Wright loss and then took out Vincent van der Voort in a chippy overtime game. That seems like quite a long time ago now, so I think we have to hope that the improved performance against Jones (who, to be fair, was averaging a ton so even peak Durrant might have had troubles) is a sign that he's over the worst of what was a bad couple of months.

It's world championship number 30 for Steve Beaton, which, if Wikipedia is to be believed is now a record. Question is how many more there will be, as there's signs of decline for Beaton. First is the rankings - he's now out of the top 32 in the world for the first time seemingly since forever, sure it's only just right now, but he's got to fight just to get what would have been guaranteed second round money having only got in through the Pro Tour rankings, and not overly high in those rankings either, being just number 23. Sliding floor form is going to be a huge problem - he's now missing majors, and even those he did make this year didn't result in anything useful - sure he drew Anderson in the UK Open, can't do much about that, and while he did sneak into the Matchplay (as the second to last qualifier) and push Adrian Lewis to overtime, is that really much of a feat these days? Steve only ended up in the last dozen or so players to make the Players Championship Finals, and won just one leg against Danny Noppert.

You may look at those Players Championship performances and think it's not all too bad, he can still make quarters, etc etc - but look at it a bit further. There are only four events where he managed to win more than one match. Two of those were on the first weekend of the season, including one of the quarter finals. The other quarter final was in Players Championship event 6 way back in February. In the various series, he won his board on the first day of the Summer Series (over Leung, Konterman and Rodriguez, none of whom are in the worlds), but since then he's lost in the first round on eight of fourteen occasions, and lost in the second round every other time. If he's going to need to qualify via floor events next year, as looks extremely likely, it's a huge concern. Let's hope 2021 is a bit better.

Fourth crack at the worlds for Diogo Portela, who's here as the South American invite on account of there being no real qualifier, and there being no other legitimate option from that area of the world. Portela's previously taken a set off of Peter Wright and ran Ron Meulenkamp pretty close, while last year's result wouldn't have been ideal, but he's continuing to work hard on his game and is pushing to try to get onto the main tour, doing what he could in a difficult 2020 for non tour card holders. He did manage to get into the one Pro Tour event - number 8, where we had pretty much everyone withdrawing and you could get into it if you'd just been working at the bar at Q-School, and he did pick up a win over Aaron Beeney and give Ian White a decent game, missing darts to go 5-3 up and eventually losing 6-4.

Where we can gauge Portela's form is the Challenge Tour - he played all 10 events, but I think it's fair to say his season was a bit disappointing, only reaching the last 16 twice and falling short of the money on more occasions than not. The first event was the best, where he went from the round of 512 (first Challenge Tour weekend is always busy) all the way to the last sixteen, beating a few known names like Vincent Kamphuis, Boris Koltsov, Dean Reynolds and Nathan Rafferty, but on the second series of events he only managed to get beyond the low 80's in terms of averages in two games, once against the hot prospect Lewis Williams, which helped a bit, and then against Richie Burnett a couple of tournaments later. If he was going to seriously challenge, you'd have expected a bit of a better average here and there, but with Beaton seemingly declining, who knows?

When are we going to see the sort of Adrian Lewis that won two world titles? I don't think it's just a case of the field having caught up and surpassed him, although they certainly have, he's just not at the peak level he was back in the day. It might surprise you to learn that it was a decade ago that he won his first worlds, but go back and look at the averages there and think to when you last saw Adie put up that sort of performance. The last thing he wants is a tricky first round draw, which is exactly what he has got, but are we underrating him? I don't know. On the floor, he's not even in the top 32 of the averages, and he went on a horror streak post-restart where he went twelve (entered) events with nine first round defeats and just four wins, of which only Stephen Bunting should be remotely threatening to Lewis. He did pick up with a semi and quarter in the last two, only falling short to Ratajski and de Sousa which is not bad at all, and was similarly able to reach the semis in the first event of the year.

On stage it's more mixed. He only played two Euro Tour events, and lost as a seed to Danny Noppert twice. No prize money = no Euro Championship. He got screwed out of the Grand Prix by a probable false Covid test. As he's won nothing, he needed to try to qualify for the Grand Slam and lost in that qualifier to Rowby-John Rodriguez. He fell at the first hurdle in the "Minehead" events to Jason Lowe and Simon Whitlock. However, he did look alright at the Matchplay, getting through a tussle with Steve Beaton before eliminating Danny Noppert with just under a ton average, only falling to the eventual champion. There's still something there, but it's increasingly sporadic, and it'll take a sustained upturn in form before we start talking about Lewis as a potential major champion again. He's triple digit odds for a reason.

Heta's going to be an enormous threat to Adie, and assuming he gets past Danny Baggish, should start as favourite. He's been playing that well in a phenomenal first year in the PDC which should see him threaten the top 32 by this time next year, maybe sooner if he has a good run which is entirely possible. His start to the year was a bit slow, positively pedestrian in fact, although it was certainly not helped by the draws - while he only got four wins in the first eight events, he did lose to van Gerwen twice, Price, Clayton, Suljovic... not exactly bad losses, neither was a first round UK Open defeat to Scott Waites, who was averaging 100 at the time. He'd miss the whole Summer Series due to not really being able to travel back from Australia, which put to bed any chances of the early majors, and then draws didn't look much better in the Autumn Series as he drew de Sousa first up in event one and lost.

Then Damon came back the next day and won one. He beat Waites, van Gerwen, van den Bergh, Ross Smith, Schindler, Bunting and Joe Cullen in the final to claim a first ranking title (having of course won a non-ranking World Series event last year). That really kicked things off - he'd make the quarters the day after and lose to van Gerwen. He'd come back in the Winter Series and make another two quarters and nearly bink another event, only being stopped by Gerwyn Price in a tight final. The Autumn Series performance got him in the Grand Slam, where he got away with one against Wattimena to qualify but took advantage of his luck and eliminated Devon Petersen, before losing a rematch against Wade. Damon had also done enough to get a top quarter seed in the Players Championship Finals, and would roll over Kuivenhoven, Murray and Ross Smith before falling to eventual finalist Mervyn King. Definitely picking the right time to hit form.

Danny Baggish is back for a second attempt, after a good opening foray in 2020 where he won a tight first round game against the ever-underrated Andy Boulton, and then gave Nathan Aspinall a fright by winning the first set and forcing sets three and four to deciding legs. He returns having won through the CDC weekend in Indianapolis in early October - he absolutely dominated the field, averaging five points more than anyone else as he clinched three of the four events, only having two games where he was significantly below a 90 average, frequently averaging upwards of 95, only having the one defeat to Darin Young - and he missed match darts in that one. Easily the USA's best product in years, he's very much one to be feared.

The questions are whether he'll be able to step up to someone of Heta's quality. I think on the basis of the CDC weekend, he's certainly capable - he got most of his big averages without significant help from his opponents which can easily cause inflation, so the quality should translate well enough. There's then the question of if he can handle the stage - that he's been here before and played well should provide plenty of confidence, I don't think that'll be a big concern. It's a tough ask and I think both players will be rueing the fact they couldn't have drawn someone else, but Danny's got the ability to do something. I suppose the real question is why the hell whoever chose the USA's World Cup team didn't pick Baggish and went with Chuck Puleo?