Roars, resurgence, revenge, rebirth. Destruction and domination. Darts.
Gerwyn Price, that swaggering, screaming master of mental manipulation, danced in defeat. Stephen Bunting danced, as he so often does, to victory. 3,500 baying fans, impressively inebriated for the first midday of 2025, danced all day and night.
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Read MoreYes, he averaged more against Ryan Joyce, and near enough the same as this against Ryan Meikle, but this was calmer, more comfortable, more fun. A 105 first-leg checkout leading into a 111 average to win the opening two sets quashed any murmurs about slow starts.
There was still a faint frailty, which occasionally allowed Aspinall the illusion he was a participant in this match, rather than a grinning, willing face for defeat.
“Start to finish I felt the best I have so far, I was more relaxed,” he said post-match. “I’m playing with absolute confidence, with freedom and now looking on to the semi-finals.” The nerves forced upon him by expectation were gone.
As he has been all tournament, Bunting was clinical and cheerful. He will be a worthy opponent, but he lacks a few of Littler’s higher gears. If the boy king decides he’s running away with the game, it’s hard to say the Bullet will be able to stop him.
But while the evening session was defined by one-sided exhibitions of ability, of flexing darting muscles, the afternoon was tense and gory and brilliant, a reminder there is no mental challenge in sport quite like this.
Dobey was playing against history, against the memory of his collapse against Rob Cross on this day a year earlier. In his way, Price is the 2021 champion desperate to convince himself and the world he is still capable of genius, with waning evidence.
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Read MoreBut despite everything, Dobey found a strength he didn’t possess in previous years. He only needed one more match dart, hitting double-double on 18 to check out 92. The man they call Hollywood is still fighting for his perfect ending.
By the end of his all-time epic with Van Gerwen, the Dutchman searching for a fourth world title and the aura which once made darts his plaything, perhaps he had. Both averaged over 103, with 31 180s hit. At one point the tension was so overwhelming, even the crowd shut up. Here were two men transforming anxiety into magic.
There they go; brave and broken, battered and bruised, beautiful and damned. A brain. An athlete. A basket case. Battling with each other, with themselves, with chance.
This was sport as high drama, sport that demanded your eyeballs and attention and emotion. This was darts, and there’s much more where that came from.
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