A historic number of seeds have been eliminated to the round of 32 in this year’s PDC World Championships at the Alexandra Palace but there are still plenty of big names left in the tournament, including two multiple time PDC World Champions in Wright and van Gerwen, and two other world champions in Price and Humphries. Add to that former finalists in Luke Littler and former semi finalists Scott Williams, Dimitri van den Bergh, Stephen Bunting, and Nathan Aspinall. Thus, over a quarter of the 32 remaining players have semi final experience or more, and all in this decade. Add Damon Heta and Jonny Clayton to the players above and you have eight of the PDC live top ten order of merit players (Wright sits at 14 currently with Williams at 36.)
Despite the above there are many other players who are now looking at this tournament as a massive opportunity.
The opening round 3 match includes the only Australian or Kiwi left in the tournament, Damon Heta. He is still in a difficult section of the draw and Luke Woodhouse has shown good form this year but Heta knows that a deep run could see him end up in the top four of the world. Heta was disappointed not to have collected a nine darter and match his great mate, the late Kyle Anderosn, having done so on the Ally Pally stage. It shows the genuine lofty standards Heta sets for himself, and why Australia is behind such a talented player. With his Kiwi family connections, he has much support in New Zealand as well! He Is actually the last player from the Southern Hemisphere in the tournament and he and Paolo Nebrida are the only non-European players left. Woodhouse made this stage once before, in 2020, but not gone past it, whilst Heta made his best world championship progress last year by winning at this stage.
The second match on Friday’s day session will see two players we have seen on the World Series of Darts stages in Australia and New Zealand go head-to-head. Jonny Clayton (Wales) and Daryl Gurney (Northern Ireland) will face off. Both players are former quarter finalists but only one will have the opportunity to play for a place in the quarter finals in round 4. The night closes off with former BDO World Champion Stephen Bunting take on Madars Razma. The Latvian fell at this stage last year and it is unlikely that Bunting will be quite as kind to him if he starts slowly as he has in some of his World Championship matches historically, losing the opening set of both his matches this year.
The night session will see two players go head-to-head who have both had doubters in the media question their results in 2024. Some pundits thought Gerwyn Price would be out of the top 16 after this tournament whilst the media attention on Joe Cullen was for all to see after he abruptly finished his press conference after his last match. Cullen was the player who halted Corey Cadby’s first run at the World Championships and then made his name, highlighted by a runners up position in the Premier League of 2022 and winning the Masters in the same year. Price and Cullen have both played at World Series of Darts events in Australia and New Zealand. Price fell in this round last year, to another player still in the draw this year, Brendan Dolan. Cullen defeated Ryan Searle 4-2 in the same round last year, before falling to eventual World Champion Luke Humphries. In fact, he has lost to the eventual World Champion for the last two years, losing to Michael Smith in round 4 in 2023.
It is a similar story in match two of the night, Jermaine Wattimena and Peter Wright both being under the spotlight of the pundits in terms of their future in darts. It was early this year that there were those questioning whether Wattimena would hold his card. His last few months superb form has demonstrated the doubters were wrong to question him. It would be the first of many, but Wattimena’s elimination of another player who had returned to some form, in James Wade, was the first seed to fall. Two-time world champion Wright was eliminated in round two last year and his premier league overall performance had some put the word retirement out there in regard to him. His form was still not great going into this competition, although there has definitely been a slight uptick in his performances at the oche recently. Many of the media had Wesley Plaisier eliminating Wright in the previous round but he got through 3-1. Now he plays off against Wattimena for a match against Nick Kenny, or more likely reigning world champion Luke Humphries.
That is the final match of Friday with youngster Kenny looking to upset Humphries on a stage he has made his own in the last 18 months. Kenny will not be a pushover as he has comfortably won his matches against Stowe Buntz and Raymond van Barneveld dropping only one set of seven. He will need to improve on his mid-80s averages from those matches in this game though. Humphries won his first match 3-0 with an average close to 91 and not dropping a leg.
Saturday UK time sees six more round three matches over two sessions. Two Ryan’s, Searle and Joyce open the day session. Both Englishmen are seen as players ready to go to the next step and this could be the match one of them does this. It does seem strange to say that of Joyce who made the quarter finals of this tournament in 2019 and Searle seems to have been mentioned as an outsider to go deep in this event for some time. Searle lost his match in this round last year, losing to Joe Cullen, and the year before, to Jose De Sousa, so he will be looking to move beyond the round as he last did for the 2022 tournament. Joyce did not even make the third round after he fell 3-0 to Stephen Bunting last year and the year before Scott Williams eliminated him in Round One so he is making gradual progress in matching, or bettering his Ally Pally results, being two wins away form matching his quarter final appearance five years ago.
Williams will appear on the stage after this match as last year’s semi finalist takes on a player who has made a stir in the early stages of this tournament for the last two years, Ricardo Pietreczko. In recent years German players have made quite a mark on this tournament, and a lot of German supporters come across the channel to be part of the crowd these days but Pietreczko is the last German standing in this event. Last year he defeated Mikuru Sizuku and Callan Rydz before falling to Luke Humphries, but not without a battle, he was 3 – 1 up in sets and two legs all and stood behind Humphries needing 54 when the future World Champion checked out 50 and from there went on to win 4-3. Williams has made this stage his own in the last two years and has already eliminated a German opponent this tournament, Niko Springer whilst he took out a former world champion, Rob Cross, in the last match of round two.
The final match of this session will see Nathan Aspinall take on Andrew Gilding. Both these players are off the highs of their darting experience in the PDC but have come through their round two matches, unlike so many of their fellow seeded players. Both won 3-1 with Gilding throwing over 92 in his match against Martin Lukeman. Aspinall was able to put the vocal support of Leonard Gates aside in eliminating the man from the US. Gilding and Aspinall fell in their first matches last year, albeit that Gilding fell to a young man called Luke Littler. Aspinall will go into this match as a slight favourite but the longer the match goes it may be Gilding becomes more of a favourite, given the issues Aspinall has had with injuries over the last couple of years.
The evening session sees two players who have been dubbed the future of darts in recent years. Josh Rock was championed after winning the world youth championships in 2022 and then making the final 16 of this event in 2022/2023. His follow up season, however, was poorer than the previous one and the media attention fell away, indeed Gary Anderson drew attention to the impact at a press conference at last year World Championships when he warned the media to give Luke Littler some space so that the same thing that happened to Rock did not happen to Littler. He has been more consistent in 2024 and has made the top 16 in the world, on the live PDC order of merit. Newcastle fan Dobey loves the world championships and has made the quarter finals in the last two events at the Ally Pally. Last year he lost in an eliminating leg of the best match of the quarter finals against Rob Cross. The year before he was thumped 5-0 by Michael van Gerwen at the same stage. The last time Dobey lost in Round 3 was the 29th of December 2020 so he has quite a run to uphold against Rock.
Michael van Gerwen then takes on Brendan Dolan in the second match of the night session. Van Gerwen has had his doubters because of issues away from the oche but he will be looking at this tournament as a way to the top. The fact that the three-time world champion has not won the title in this decade will not sit well with van Gerwen. Dolan defeated another former world champion in Gerwyn Price at this stage last year, before defeating another one, Gary Anderson, in the following round (he lost to Littler in the quarter finals.) Both players had similar wins in round two. The match would be previewed usually with a headline of which Dolan will turn up, but his success on this stage in recent times means that it should be the Dolan that will challenge van Gerwen. The real question might be whether the really clinical van Gerwen will turn up and take advantage of every opportunity presented to him to move into the next round. He will know in this quarter there really is an opportunity to make a semi-final, with Dimitri van den Bergh the biggest threat to that.
As usual the media room will be full for the last game of the night as Luke Littler returns to the stage once more. After the emotional outburst post his last match, and the new expectations of him after that and after that amazing last set, it will be interesting to see how Littler goes in the initial stages of this match. Now that White has once more won on TV he will feel like there is nothing to lose. Littler, on the other hand, knows there is much to dropping the story at this point. Littler’s year has been created by the media asking him to finish the story, return to the final and win it (ironically in a year that he got the support of another person who finished his ‘story’ this year, Cody Rhodes.) The young man showed the pressure of that expectation post-match last time around. He got through his first match, so it may well be it will be better this time around, certainly he was better in his second match last year. White will be methodical but whether he can avoid a Littler onslaught at times in this match could well be the making or unmaking of his campaign.
The last four matches of the third round will be played Sunday UK time. Jeffrey de Graaf and Paolo Nebrida will take on each other in a match many would have predicted would be Gary Anderson against either Jim Williams or Ross Smith. De Graaf did have good form coming in so some of the good pundits are not completely surprised to see him do so well. It was an emotional last round victory for Hong Kong’s Nebrida as he made the third round for the first time in his career. In five world championships (across the PDC and BDO) De Graaf had never won a match until last year when he also made round 3. That experience (he lost 4-2 to Robe Cross after defeating Richie Edhouse in round one and Jose de Sousa in round two) might be enough to get the Swede through to round four.
The second match sees Kevin Doets, the last of the three Dutchmen left to play in this round when he steps up at the oche, take on Krzysztof Ratajski. The 47-year-old Pole will need all his experience against 26-year-old Doets who is really on a wave in his darting career at the moment. Having just been eliminated by Michael Smith (the then reigning champion) on debut last year, Doets used that experience, and having now won on the Ally Pally stage against Noa-Lynn van Leuven in round one, to eliminate the same man at the same stage this year, both players averaging just under 97 in the match. Ratajski has had his doubters in this part of his career with many predicting a drop out of the world’s top 32. That could still happen if he drops this match. He made this round last year, losing to Jonny Clayton, indeed he has made this round every year but 2022 this decade. Of those he has only won once though, so he will be looking to improve on this recent record. When he did win in this round in 2021 (against Simon Whitlock), he went on to make his first quarter finals. For both players it will be either creating a new story, or the retelling of another one.
The last match of the day session is Dimitri van den Bergh against Callan Rydz. For the semi-finalist from two years ago he is seeking some redemption having lost his opening match last year. Having made the quarter finals of this tournament in 2022 Rydz lost his next two matches, in round two of 2023 and 2024, he has now got past that hurdle this time around. With both players progressing deep into the tournament the last time they won in round 3 both players will want this match and believe at such an open section of the draw they can have a deep run.
Sunday night will see the final round 3 match before the opening two matches of round four will be played (the other 6 matches of that stage being played on Monday UK time.) Ricky Evans, having survived his matches against GG Mathers and Dave Chisnall, will take on Welshman Robert Owen (who has progressed past Neils Zonneveld and Gabriel Clemens, both with significant support from the Dutch and German fans in the crowd, respectively.) This is only Owen’s second ever PDC World Championship, having lost 3-2 to Andrew Gilding in the opening round of 2023. He is currently on the cusp of losing his card, so this match is a must win to help him try and retain his card. Evans has never made it past round three but has made it in 2014, 2016, 2020, and 2021. Last year he lost to Daryl Gurney, having eliminated Nathan Aspinall in the previous round. With Chizzy already a notch in his belt, Evans till be looking to not repeat last year and come off such a big win with a loss.
Events are shown on Fox Sports and Kayo in Australia, Sky Sports in New Zealand and PDC TV for subscribers. Check local guides for time details
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