UK Open - Preview
Snowdrops and Crocuses - The UK Open
It is the beginning of March, snowdrops and crocuses are in full bloom, the sun is shining (from time to time), the birds are singing - it is obvious: not only spring but the UK Open are upcoming too.Despite a still blooming Corona variant named Omicron, despite a challenging war in the Ukraine for us dart fans in the next few days our main interest will be the UK Open in Minehead often called the FA Cup of Darts as this is the tournament without seeds, with amateurs and without a tournament bracket as after each round a new draw will take place. With the exception of the first to third round which are always drawn before the tournament starts.
The crowd will be back in Minehead while I decided to stay at home - again. And the war has a teeny-weeny impact on the tournament as well as the only Russian participant - who is in fact not even Russian but Georgian/Greek but lives in Moskau Russia - Boris Koltsov had to withdraw. Due to this his opponent Brian Raman has a bye in the second round. Why the German Michael Unterbuchner withdrew is not known but his opponen Scott Waites gets a bye as well, in the first round.
So far no other cancellations are known - all other 158 participants seem to be determined to take part.
The first day - Friday 4. March this year - always is the most stressfull and most thrilling day - it starts with an afternoon session in which three rounds will be played. Which means should you enter the tournament first round it might happen that you've already played three matches on three different boards till the afternoon is over. which of course would be great as you won your matchess but as well confusing as there often is not much time between the matches and you have to stay well informed what is going on on the boards you are supposed to play. Because when you are late on your next board you are out of the tournament.It happens quite often - last year it happened to Steve Brown who got so engrossed into his son's match that he was too late for his own.
All Tour Card holders - with the exception of Boris Koltsov and Michael Unterbuchner - will be in Minehead plus some players who qualified by the Development and the Challenge Tour and 16 players who qualified via Riley's amateur qualifying events. This year an astonishing number of players who one knows already from PDC events but who don't have a Tour Card or just lost their Tour Card used the Riley's qualifiers to get a place in the tournament. I am not quite sure that really is part of the intention for the amateur qualifiers. and of those who qualified by this way there are only five who never ever before played the UK Open: Paul Marsh, Danny Lauby, Steve Clayson, Matt Good and Adam Warner. Paul Marsh played a few BDO/WDF events and years ago in the PDC Qualifying School, American Danny Lauby probably is known to most of us from the World Cup of Darts and the last PDC World Championship. Steve Clayson ,well, he seems to be a real amateur. He is a kitchen fitter, 59 years of age and never before played on TV. Matt Good threw a nine-darter during the qualifier - no more is known about his darting skills. From Adam Warner is known that he years ago played darts at the University of Sheffield and there won a competition..
There are many more debutants among the Tour Card holders and the qualifiers from the Challenge Tour and the Development Tour. More astonishing is that among the Tour Card Qualifiers with James Wade and Steve Beaton we find two players who have been involved in each UK Open since the inception in 2003. James Wade beside is the reigning champion and a three times title winner. And he's still not even 40 years of age.
With James Wade we already arrived at the favourites to win this year's tournament. As the UK Open often turns out to be some kind of surprise bag it is a difficult tournament for prediction. But despite all the upsets we did see over the years and despite all the surprising and not to be expected runs some players had in the event the winners often came from the group of inform players. We had only two suprise winners so far - Robert Thornton in 2012 and Nathan Aspinall in 2019. The other surprise players usually failed in the final should they get so far as did Barrie Bates in 2006 or Gary Mawson in 2008 or Corey Cadby in 2018.
The inform players this year definitely are Peter Wright and Gerwyn Price without any doubt at all. Around those two we find a group of players who are in good form or who are always in the mix such as James Wade, Jonny Clayton or Michael van Gerwen, Michael Smith and Gary Anderson. And there are a few could be's as well who recently showed a return to form as Dimitri van den Bergh, Nathan Aspinall and might be Rob Cross. It to be sure will be interesting to see how all those players will fare in the event. I am sure we will see upsets, I am sure we will see some astonishing runs - might be of some of the young players like Callan Rydz or Josh Rock. The rather small group of favourites to win the title will leave room enough for stunning performances of other players.
The age range of the players extends from seventeen years old German Fabian Schmutzler (born 2005) to almost sixty years old Ross Montgomery( born 1962). We will see players from 24 different countries - an astonishing number though still by far the most participants come from England followed on second place by the Netherlands. But the numbers of participants from other countries is rising - for example there will be seven German players and five players from North America among the participants. As it is a tournament which is first played on eight different boards we will not see every single match on TV as the broadcaster concentrates on the main stage and on stage 2. That is a pity and I wonder whether now-a-days there would not be a possibility to stream all the boards so that one would be able to pick the matches one would really want to see. Not necessarily the matches on the main stage or the second stage are the most thrilling or entertaining matches.
But to be sure that's moaning on a high level. I am sure it will be a good tournament as always, we'll see a lot of darts over the next three days and I wouldn't mind should we see a surprise winner on Sunday evening.