Players Championship 8: Last 16 for Klaasen, RVB unwell

Wim Blokpoel - Friday was the final tournament of this week’s pro tour action, Players Championship 8. 

I am going to write about the Dutch results from that day, but first something else. Raymond van Barneveld was marking the match between Jeffrey de Zwaan and Zoran Leechbacher, when at 5-5 he suddenly collapsed. The players, and medical team helped RVB after that, and he didn’t have to go to the hospital. The matches were stopped for over an hour though, and all players were shocked by what happened to RVB. Thankfully, Raymond van Barneveld is feeling better now, it was just stuffy in the venue, and he had a lor of stress mainly because of personal stuff. Dutch Darts would like to wish RVB the best wishes, and hopefully the personal stuff will be getting better. 

Over to the darts, although friday told us there are more important things than darts. It’s understandable that the Dutch players weren’t really focused anymore, and in fact only one Dutchman reached the last 16. Former Lakeside world champion Jelle Klaasen started his day on the stream. It was his best performance of the day as he averaged 96.7 in a 6-4 win over James Wilson. In round 2 Klaasen had a rough opponent in South African Devon Petersen. They got all the way to 5-5 and Petersen had the darts in leg 11. Jelle Klaasen however, produced an upset as he won the last leg in 15 darts to beat Petersen 6-5 and go through to his board final. In this board final Klaasen faced Welsh talent Lewis Williams. It was a very impressive 6-1 win for The Cobra, as Klaasen was the only Dutchman in round 4. In this fourth round he lost 2-6 to Polish Krzysztof Ratajski, but still a great result for Klaasen in a year in which he needs results like this to keep his tourcard. 

Danny Noppert started PC8 against fellow Dutchman Martijn Kleermaker in an all Dutch first round. Noppert had his best performance of the day, as a 96 average saw him beat Kleermaker 6-3. In the last 64 Noppert continued with a very easy 6-1 win over ‘Primetime’ Matthew Edgar. The board final was the end of the day for Noppert, ‘The Freeze’ lost 4-6 to Steve West. Another solid day for Noppert, but perhaps he expected a little more this week. 

So only 2 Dutchman won more than 1 game today, apart from Klaasen and Noppert there were 3 more Dutch wins. Aubergenius Dirk van Duijvenbode played on stream as well in round 1, and won 6 legs in a row after being 0-2 down to beat Martin Lukeman 6-2 with a 96.9 average. In round 2 DVD lost to earlier mentioned Lewis Williams, 4-6. Maik Kuivenhoven, who had a great run yesterday, started today great as well with a 98.6 average and 6-2 win over Lisa Ashton. In round 2 Kuivenhoven had an early lead but still lost 5-6 to Jason Lowe. Niels Zonneveld, quarter-finalist on wednesday, had a very impressive win in round 1. He beat Mervyn King 6-5 despite averaging over 5 points lower. In round 2 it was another 6-5 against a legend of the game, but this time it was Zonneveld who lost, 5-6 to Steve Beaton. 

Apart from Kleermaker, 10 more Dutchmen lost in round 1. Before all thr bad stuff happened, Van Barneveld lost 1-6 to Ryan Searle who averaged an unreal 106,5. In the game where it went wrong for RVB, Jeffrey de Zwaan eventuakly lost 5-6 to Lerchbacher but as said before, for those 2 it’s much more important that RVB is feeling better now than their darting results. On stream Almere’s Ron Meulenkamp didn’t repeat his performance against Lewis yesterday, Meulenkamp averaged below 80 and lost 2-6 to Devon Petersen. Vincent van der Voort played Steve Brown for the third day in a row, but this time VVDV lost it, and he lost it big: 1-6 for Brown. Jermaine Wattimena averaged 101.8 in round 1, but still lost 5-6 to Belgian Kim Huybrechts who averaged almost 103 himself. Other first round loses came from: Lorenzo Pronk (3-6 against Ratajski), Gino Vos (0-6 against Ritchie Edhouse), Berry van Peer (3-6 against Joe Murnan), Derk Telnekes (1-6 against Scott Mitchell) and Luc Peters (1-6 against Gabriel Clemens)

We will be back soon with the monthly q & a and after that we will givd updates on the premier league at the start of april, with World Number two Michael van Gerwen.