PDC World Darts Championship: Big names stumble but don't quite fall at the first

PDC World Darts Championship: Big names stumble but don't quite fall at the first originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

THERE has been no wholesale slaughter of the elite at the gates of this year’s PDC World Championship – no biblical purge of top seeds tumbling in unison – yet, there have most certainly been more than a few gilded names who have smashed headlong into the opening hurdle, sprawled awkwardly across the tarmac, and somehow, through grit, guile or sheer bloody-mindedness, hauled themselves back upright to stagger across the line. Barely. Just.

So why, on the grandest stage darts can offer, have so many of the game’s aristocrats stumbled, spluttered and temporarily misplaced their A-game against qualifiers, newcomers and men still pinching themselves to be there? The answers are neither mysterious nor especially flattering. They are, in truth, glaringly obvious. Here are the chief culprits – or at least those that demand immediate indictment.

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COMPLACENCY

Dismissed. Immediately. Without ceremony. Yes, complacency exists in professional sport. It creeps in when a titan faces an opponent they believe they should dispatch with one hand tied behind their back. But this is not a Tuesday afternoon floor event in Wigan. This is the PDC World Championship – the Everest of the tungsten world, the summit every one of the 128 participants has clawed towards. If you are here, you belong. You did something right. You possess the tools, the touch, the temperament – or at the very least, enough of them to be dangerous.

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Luke Littler. Luke Humphries. Michael van Gerwen. Gerwyn Price. If any of these men perform anywhere near their natural altitude, they should not be losing to qualifiers or debutants – with the odd, glaring exception. Littler himself, two years ago, was technically a debutant. But he was not a debutant in spirit. He arrived less as a newcomer and more as an omen. These players are far too battle-hardened, far too scarred by history, to stroll onto the Ally Pally stage underestimating anyone. They have seen shocks. Some have suffered them. They know better. And if complacency ever truly is the reason? Then frankly, the sentence is deserved and the verdict unanimous.

NERVES & PRESSURE

Ah. Now we are getting warmer. No ranking, no reputation, no haul of silverware grants immunity from nerves. The pre-match jitters arrive for everyone – the difference lies in how they are managed, masked or mastered. Suddenly, you are not just playing darts. You are performing under the lights at Alexandra Palace, with a million pounds glittering menacingly in the distance. If that does not tighten the chest and quicken the pulse, nothing will.

The pressure compounds when you face someone you know you are better than. Someone you are expected to beat. Someone whose very presence in the contest feels like an administrative formality. The faintest flicker of what if can be enough to send a cold sweat trickling down the spine.

All the noise before the match points one way – the superstar versus the story. The former major champion against the wide-eyed debutant. The idea of defeat is not merely unlikely; it is unthinkable. And yet it happens. It has happened. Ask Mike De Decker, who knows all too well how thin the line between assumption and humiliation can be. Nothing screams pressure louder than being labelled a potential World Champion in the richest tournament the sport has ever staged. The crown weighs heaviest before it is even worn.

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THE CROWD

Finally, the unseen hand. Or rather, the very seen, very heard one. The Ally Pally crowd chooses early. And more often than not, it chooses romance. The underdog. The fairy tale. The man with the backstory, the novelty factor. When a superstar meets a first-timer or a player wrapped in Cinderella’s slipper, the sympathies are rarely split. Mike De Decker alluded to this in the aftermath of his shock defeat to David Munyua. The Belgian was candid enough to admit his own performance was nowhere near the required standard – but he also pointed to the atmosphere as a contributing force.

Professionals are told to deal with it. To block it out. To accept it as part of the job description. And most do. But when the treble twenty shrinks to the size of an ant, when doubles scatter like startled pigeons, the last thing you crave is several thousand people in fancy dress delighting in your discomfort. Especially when thousands of pounds – and in some cases, your very career trajectory – are balancing on the knife edge of a missed dart. So yes, the crowd matters. Not always. Not for everyone. But sometimes, devastatingly, it does.

And that, in essence, is why the heavy artillery has either fallen early or limped over the line. Because if the great Michael van Gerwen himself can be dragged through a thorny hedge by a plucky Japanese opponent before escaping with his crown intact, then the message is unmistakable. It can happen to anyone. And sooner or later, it will.

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