The two Monday sessions of the PDC World Championships 2025 version at the Alexandra Palace sees the other six quarter finalists get determined, joining two former world champions in Gerwyn Price and Peter Wright in Round Five.
The opening two matches of the afternoon session sees two Geordies go back-to-back. Of the 14 players left two are dutchmen as Kevin Doets takes on Chris Dobey in the first match. Doets is not perhaps the second Dutchman people would expect to be still in the draw, but he survived four match darts against Krzysztof Ratajski and having come from 2-1 and 3-2 down in sets he will have confidence in any situation. Pundits thought that the challenge of Josh Rock may be too much for Dobey but he disproved them once again. Last year Dobey won this round 4-0 against the man who had beaten Doets in round 2, Michael Smith, so he will not be overawed by this stage.
Callan Rydz, the man that Peter Wright claimed should be favourite given his form at this tournament, then takes on Welshman Robert Owen. Owen has moved up the rankings and is unlikely to lose his tour card anymore. He is coming off the biggest match of his life against Robert Owen only 18 hours before so it will be a big ask to back up. Rydz has made the quarter finals of this tournament once before, in the 2022 tournament, so knows what it is like to play the other side of new year. He defeated Alan Souter 4-1 at this stage at the end of 2021 so that experience could help him here.
The last match of the afternoon sees a third Englishman favourite to progress with Nathan Aspinall taking on Ricardo Pietreczko. The young German has had success on this stage over the last two years, losing in the third round in a deciding set to eventual champion Luke Humphries last year, and this year taking out last year’s semi finalist Scott Williams 4-1. With Rob Cross eliminated Pietreczko is facing only his second seeded opponent of the tournament in terms of Aspinall. The Englishman has had his doubters (the story of this tournament really) and his injuries are always a concern. Last match he got caught up with the crowd and afterwards said that he needed to try to not get caught up with the. Certainly, his match in the World Series in Wollongong demonstrated when that can go wrong for him, and he won’t want to give his German opponent half a chance to get well in front. He does round out three English players who are all favourites to progress from the afternoon session.
The evening will see former BDO World Champion Stephen Bunting take on the man who eliminated Damon Heta, Luke Woodhouse, in a match that guarantees at least one Englishman will progress (Littler and Joyce’s later match guarantees a second.) The man from Worcestershire came back from 3-1 down against Heta to make the fourth round for the very first time (indeed he has not progressed past the second round since his debut year of 2020.) Bunting does have experience in this round, having won in the fourth round in 2015, 2021 and 2023 and losing in this round in 2020 and 2024. He lost 4-0 to MvG in this round last year so won’t mind seeing him play someone else in a match tonight. Bunting has had good crowd support this year but support should be more split tonight as Woodhouse has come across as a great person in this, and previous, tournaments. Bunting’s experience makes him favourite going into the match.
Michael van Gerwen will not be particularly pleased being in the second match of the night as he takes on Swede Jeffrey de Graaf. Van Gerwen is definitely looking at this as an opportunity to show he still has it, especially in his quarter of the draw where he is the only seeded player left. De Graaf has only dropped two sets, but there was a seven-point difference in averages between the two in the last round and the Swede will know he must up his game to the levels he did against Gary Anderson to progress past his Dutch opponent. This match does guarantee one player from mainland Europe will be in the final eight.
The final match of the night is the Luke Littler story once more. He has shown a set each match of the form of last year but he has given chances to his opponents to this point. Ryan Joyce has averaged over 90 in each of his matches so far and will be a threat if Littler starts slowly once more. This round last year saw Littler average over 105 against Raymond van Barneveld so he knows he needs to start putting his foot on the accelerator at this point to continue to put doubt in the minds of not only his current opponents, but those upcoming. With Humphries gone there is no possible rematch of the final in the semi-finals so Littler knows that there is a great opportunity in his half of the draw but he can’t look beyond the threat of Joyce in this match first.
Matches on Foz Sports channel 507, Kayo sports, Sky Sports NZ, and PDC TV.
Monday December 30
Afternoon Session (1230 GMT, 1130 AEDST)
3x Fourth Round
Kevin Doets v Chris Dobey
Rob Owen v Callan Rydz
Ricardo Pietreczko v Nathan Aspinall
Evening Session (1900 GMT, Tuesday December 31 0600 AEDST)
3x Fourth Round
Stephen Bunting v Luke Woodhouse
Michael van Gerwen v Jeffrey de Graaf
Luke Littler v Ryan Joyce
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