Veenstra, Plooy and Pronk all through to final stage Q-school!

Wim Blokpoel - Today the first phase of EU Q-School started, with group A. Group A will play 3 days, in which the 4 semi-finalists of every days tournament go through to the final stage immediately and the 43 best players on the order of merit after those 3 days go through as well. The first day had much Dutch success with 3 of the 4 players going through tho the final phase of the Q-school immediately! 

First, we saw former Dutch Open champion Richard ‘Flyers’ Veenstra go through. The 39-year-old Dutchman started his day with an easy 6-1 victory over fellow Dutchman Toon Greebe. In the last 64 Veenstra beat another Dutchman, Paul Wacanno 6-3, and in the last 32 the third one in a row, Gian van Veen 6-5 while averaging 88, his best match of the day. In the last 16 Veenstra had a very easy 6-2 over German Niko Springer. The final match of day 1, Veenstra played against the quite unknown Belgian Remo Mandiau, who he beat 6-4 in a tough battle. Richard Veenstra didn’t even show his best today, so hopefully he saves that for the final phase which he’s in now!

Another Dutchman who went through was Michael Plooy. Michael isn’t very well known, but he did play in some Eurotour events some years ago. Plooy started with a very imprresive 6-1 win over Kai Gotthardt. In the last 64 it was a very good 90.7 average to beat another German, Marko Puls 6-4. In the last 32 Plooy made a huge upset, beating former BDO World Championship semi-finalist Mario Vandenbogaerde 6-3. Another upset came in his final match where he won 6-4 against German talent Nico Kurz to go straight through to the final phase! It were 4 very impressive wins from Michael Plooy today.

Last but not least we had another surprising Dutch name through: Lorenzo Pronk! Pronk, who was the winner of the NDB men B ranking 2018-2019 started his day with a 6-1 win against Moritz Schmitz. Next match he won 6-5 against fellow Dutch talent Patrick van den Bogaard. The last 32 saw Pronk beat Egor Tvorogov 6-3 and in the last 16 he got his biggest win, as he beat former Grand Slam quarter-finalist Michael Unterbuchner 6-2, despite ‘only’ averaging 72,2. His final match was the best one from Pronk as he averaged 90,8 and won 6-4 against former BDO World Trophy winner Geert de Vos. So, Lorenzo Pronk the third great Dutch player into the final phase!

Apart from these 3, we also saw some more Dutch players who picked up important points for the order of merit. First of all 5-time World Champion Raymond van Barneveld started his comeback by a decent day, reaching the last 16 which included the only 100+ average any player hit today, when he won 6-0 against Gillian Koehoorn in the last 32. Unfortunately it ended in the last 16 where he missed 2 matchdarts and lost 5-6 to Croatian Pero Ljubic. Another last 16 was for 2020 BDO World Championship participant Dennie Olde Kalter, who beat the likes of Michael Rasztovitz and Daniel Sprudzs before he lost to Nico Kurz. Finally we also saw young Dutch talent Moreno Blom who had great matches with high 80 averages in which he beat Jeffrey van Egdom and Wesley Plaisier. In the last 16, unfortunately he lost 5-6 to Geert de Vos. Great day for Dutch Darts, and finally I would like to wish a speed recovery to Justin van Tergouw who had to withdraw because of illness, and Mikel van Maastrigt who had to withdraw during the last 32 when he got ill during his match against Geert de Vos. Get well soon both!