2021 Q-School entries confirmed: these are the Dutch players
Wim Blokpoel - Today the entries have been announced for Q-School. Both UK and EU Q-school have been split in 2 groups. Group A and group B. From both groups, players will go through to the final stage of Q-School. In that final stage are already the 2019/2020 tourcard holders who lost their tourcard and entered Q-school, and also the top players from 2020’s Challenge tour and Development tour. We’ll talk about all Dutch entries, and some we’ll spent more time for.
Final Stage
In the final stage of the EU Q-School, are 10 Dutch players. Yordi Meeuwisse and Mike van Duivenbode aren’t in that list, they won’t try to get their tourcards back. Possibly the biggest names are Benito van de Pas and Jan Dekker. Benito has strugled a lot recent years. 2015 until 2017 he was an incredible player, he won pro tours and reached multiple major quarter-finals: back to back at the World Grand Prix, and also at the World Series Finals and Players Championship Finals. Until 2017 he was a top 16 player. However, he dropped down the rankings after that, but still made the last 16 of the World Championships in 2019. After that it wasn’t much, we saw him at the 2020 World Championship where he won against Gabriel Clemens in round 1, but that was basically it. Hopefully Benito can find some form again. Next we have Jan Dekker. Jan got his biggest succes at the BDO where he reached the semi-finals at Lakeside in 2011 and 2014. in 2015 he won 3 Challenge tour events which gave him a tourcard for 2016. He didn’t have much results yet at the PDC but did reach the World Championship 4 times, in which he beat the likes of Jelle Klaasen, Lisa Ashton and Ryan Joyce. Jan also had a run to the Players Championship Finals where he reached the last 8 in 2017. However, after bad stuff in his personal life, he didn’t play as well as he can since 2019, and after not reaching the 2021 World Championship he lost his tourcard, hopefully he’ll get him straight back
More names on the list: Maik Kuivenhoven who beat Michael van Gerwen twice on the floor last year, also had a quarter-final run in a Eurotour event last year, and recently made his World Championship debut. It wasn’t enough to safe his tourcard, but hopefully he can continue his good form. Geert Nentjes, who played in 2 World Championships already and had some great results at the Development tour will try to win hie tourcard back, so does Vincent van der Meer from The Hague. Niels Zonneveld who recently made the last 32 of the PC Finals and made his World Championship debut will try to win his one back as well. We also have challenge tour players Maikel Verberk from Oss, and Jitse van der Wal who even won a Challenge tour last year, and played in some Pro tour events already. From the development tour we will also see Damian Mol who is a great talent, and possibly the biggest talent we have at this moment Kevin Doets, who won a Development Tour, Challenge Tour and the Dutch Darts Quarantaine league all in 2020.
Group A
In group A, we see 2 very special names. First up we have Richard Veenstra, who had big results at the BDO in recent years. It started with a semi-final at Lakeside in 2016, but he also followed that with big titles: Dutch Open, British Open and British Classic to name a few. Veenstra also reached the final of the Finder Darts Masters 2018, and has some experience at the PDC stage as he played in the Grand Slam of Darts 2019. He has never got a tourcard but hopefully this will be his first time. But the biggest name in Group A is obviously five-time World Champion Raymond van Barneveld. The 2007 PDC World Champion retired last year, but misses the darts (And we miss him) so he decided to make a comeback! RVB hasn’t got experience at Q-School as he got in the PDC before Q-School even excisted, and stayed in there for a long time. However, Van Barneveld is probably the most experienced darts player in the field, and despite we don’t know how his form is, he is probably one of the favourites to win a tourcard.
There are much more Dutch Darts players in group A. We’ve got Moreno Blom who missed matchdarts against Jeffrey de Zwaan at the 2020 World Youth Championship, we have two time PDC world championship participant Toon Greebe, who lost one of his legs 3 years ago, but got some good results at the BDO since then and is now trying to come back. We also have the young very talented Danny Jansen who had great results at the NDB tournaments, we have 2020 BDO World Championship finalist Chris Landman. We have another participant from that tournament, Dennie Olde Kalter, multiple Eurotour particpiant Wesley Plaisier and another Eurotour participant in Patrick van den Bogaard. Finally we also have 2017 and 2018 BDO World Youth Champion very talented youngster Justin van Tergouw, and 2020 PDC World Youth Championship participant Gian van Veen. Also a big shoutout to the other Dutch participants in this group, in alphabetic order: Christiaan de Boer, Jeffrey de Zeeuw, Leo Hendriks, Gillian Koehoorn, René Kruit, Patrick Maat, Jeroen Mioch, Berry Pater, Patrick Peters, Michael Plooy, Lorenzo Pronk, Davy Proosten, Leon Reijnders, Michael Stoeten, Johannes van de Weerd, John van de Weerd, Jeremy van der Winkel, Eimardo van Engelen, Mikel van Maastrigt, Rients Visser and Paul Wacanno.
Group B
Finally, we have group B. Again there are 2 big names in this one. First, there is 2012 Lakeside champion Christian Kist. Kist had a tourcard at the PDC from 2014 until 2019 as well. In those years he played in four World Championships, a World Matchplay and a World Grand Prix. It stopped after 2017 though, after losing from Michael van Gerwen at the 2018 World’s we haven’t seen much more of him and at the end of 2019 he lost his tourcard, and didn’t manage to win it back yet. Hopefully he will now though! Another big name is Jeffrey de Graaf! De Graaf played 4 times at Lakeside and won some big BDO events including the Swedish Open and Denmark Open. De Graaf earlier had a tourcard as well, from 2016 until 2018. Here he reached the UK Open and PC Finals in his debut year. After that he didn’t achieve much, he did made his World Championship debut at the 2019 World’s, but after losing to Noel Malicdem in round 1 there he lost his tourcard, and never won it back again. Hopefully De Graaf will also win his back though!
Other names in Group B include former PDC World Championship participant Ryan de Vreede, and very talented 2020 World Youth Championship participant Levy Frauenfelder. We also have both Jimmy and Jerry Hendriks. Jimmy who had a tourcard between 2017 and 2018 and played in the PC Finals 2017, and Jerry Hendriks who felt like a fish on the stage, when he famously played in the PDC World Championship. Those names are joined by challenge tour player Arjan Konterman, who also played in some Pro Tour matches last year and Willem Mandigers who is a great player as he played in 6 BDO World Championships and won for example the Denmark Open and Turkish Open. Hopefully those 2 will also get a tourcard for the first time in their career. We also have 2019 World Masters Last 16 participant Roemer Mooijman, and the very talented Luc Peters who played for the Netherlands at the WDF World Cup before. Finally, we also have 2020 UK Open participants Owen Roelofs and Danny van Trijp who are two very talented young players, and of course two time world championship participant Gino Vos. Shoutout to the other Dutch players in group B: Sam Coenders, Danny de Graaf, Jan-Dirk de Groot, Joey de Jong, Mathieu de Loos, Martijn Dragt, Ansjelo Gerritsen, Marco Jansen, Sergio Krassen, Erik Meulenmeesters, Colin Philippi, Kay Smeets, Wesley van der Broek, Robert van der Heijden, Gijsbert van Malsen, Erik van Manen, Marvin van Velzen and Maikel Venema. Good luck everyone!
