The Nine Darter, Week 3: From Down Under To The Top Of The Table

Welcome to The Nine Darter, Uproxx Sports’ weekly recap of what happened during this week’s episode of BBC America’s Thursday Night Darts, which chronicles each week of the 2018 Unibet Premier League Darts. This week, let’s go to Newcastle’s Metro Radio Arena.

Thousands upon thousands of fans went into Motorpoint Arena Cardiff to watch a fun evening of darts, one which put a pair of surprising names atop the table and has the defending world champion sitting uncomfortably in last place. Oh, and we also saw the world No. 1 take on the world No. 2 in a delightful match. Let’s darts.

1. The Results And Table

Mensur Suljovic 2 — 7 Michael Smith
Daryl Gurney 6 — 6 Gerwyn Price
Peter Wright 4 — 7 Rob Cross
Gary Anderson 3 — 7 Michael van Gerwen
Simon Whitlock 7 — 4 Raymond van Barneveld

1. Simon Whitlock: 3-0-0, +11, 6 points
2. Michael Smith: 3-0-0, +10, 6 points
3. Michael van Gerwen: 2-0-1, +7, 4 points
t-4. Peter Wright: 1-1-1, -1, 3 points
t-4. Raymond van Barneveld: 1-1-1, -1, 3 points
6. Gary Anderson: 1-0-2, -2, 2 points
7. Daryl Gurney: 0-2-1, -3, 2 points
8. Gerwyn Price: 0-2-1, -4, 2 points
9. Rob Cross: 1-0-2, -8, 2 points
10. Mensur Suljovic: 0-0-3, -9, 0 points

2. Tops

Smith and Whitlock continue their torrid starts to the season, and both did this in impressive fashion. Bully Boy and The Wizard throttled their opponents this week, extending their leads atop the table. Of course, this is great for them, even if the best darts player in the world is lurking behind both of them. The good news is both players avoid MVG for a few more weeks — Whitlock gets him Week 6, Smith during Week 8 — so as long as they keep up their tremendous play, they can build up a little bit of a cushion before they get darts’ toughest test.

3. Bullied ’em

So let’s start with Smith, who looked confident in his 7-2 thrashing of Suljovic. Here’s what we wrote last week about Suljovic:

The good news for Suljovic is that if he keeps playing as well as he had the first two weeks, he’ll be fine. Thursday was just Barney’s night.

Well apparently, Suljovic didn’t decide to keep up that form, averaging a 91.15 on the evening. Smith, meanwhile, had a respectable 94.80 average. He was also a stone cold killer, as he jumped out to a 2-0 lead before Suljovic tied it up. At that point, Smith decided he was done playing games, and won the next five legs en route to a route.

Smith is doing everything right in his Premier League debut, and while I was plenty skeptical of him heading into this week, he looks like he’s locked in and ready to win the entire thing. I have doubts that he will, but after this week, I have no doubt that he has what it takes to hang around until the end.

4. Hot Fire

So before we get into the slugfest between Anderson and van Gerwen, let’s watch this, because oh my god did it rule.

MVG was on a nine darter — the sport’s holy grail — and threw seven perfect darts before missing on a T19. Because Anderson had to clear 170, the toughest out in darts, it looked like van Gerwen would get the chance to finish off a 10-dart leg.

But Anderson, when he is on, is the one person who can hang with van Gerwen when MVG is at his best. So he stepped up and threw three perfect darts — T20, T20, bull — for a checkout. This is as good of a leg of darts as you’ll ever see out of two players, and the reaction from the crowd and from the announcers shows it.

5. Best in the world

Unfortunately for Anderson, though, van Gerwen is still the world’s best darts player. So after Anderson won the aforementioned leg to take a 3-2 lead on him, MVG stormed back to win five legs in a row and take the match, 7-3. On the night, van Gerwen led all players with seven 180s. He’s very good

But Anderson is, in his own right, very good. He’s getting back into shape after a back injury, and van Gerwen admitted after the match that the two bring the best out of one another. This is exactly what you want to see out of the two best players on earth: A rivalry where both guys readily admit the other makes them play better.

Unfortunately, Anderson began to slip towards the end, which is something you absolutely cannot do against MVG.

But still, the two were on fire on Thursday. Anderson’s average of 110.79 was the highest we’ve seen this year during the Premier League. In second? The 110.62 that van Gerwen threw down against him. These two facing off with a Premier League title on the line in a few months would be great, wouldn’t you agree?

6. Pure wizardry

Watching Whitlock’s run to start the year has been more fun than watching Smith, if only because the Aussie is back after missing out on the Premier League for the last three years. (Plus his last appearance saw him coming in 10th, so, yeah, this is unexpected.)

He was able to stave off a torrid performance from Suljovic in week one with a torrid performance of his own. He faced off against Cross, who forgot how darts worked, in week two. And in week three, he went toe to to with van Barneveld, a matchup of two veterans who have competed against one another on the biggest stage in the past.

This week, Whitlock jumped out to a 3-0 lead and kept Barney at arm’s length the whole time, walking out with a 7-4 victory.

Barney’s lack of sharpness cost him, and Whitlock to his credit made him pay.

Unlike Smith, Whitlock has shown he can get the job done in major tournaments — he’s been a runner up at both the world championship and in the Premier League in the past. But unlike those prior tournaments, perhaps this is the year he goes from the bridesmaid to the bride.

7. In scores of other games

Look at Cross pick up his first Premier League win! Through two weeks, Cross looked like an amateur, getting absolutely waxed by both van Gerwen and Whitlock. This week, he went up against Wright, who as the world No. 2 was capable of doing damage against the Premier League debutant.

Instead, credit goes to Cross, who despite getting outscored by averages (Wright had a 102.32 to his 98.46) was able to pick up a 7-4 victory. The impressive thing is that whenever Wright would pick up some momentum, like when this happened…

…Cross was undeterred.

As for the big comeback on the night, Price was down 5-1 against Gurney and very easily could have packed it in. Instead, he stole a point, forcing a 6-6 draw, partly because he absolutely exploded and started completing massive checkouts like it was nothing.

Gurney, Price, and Cross are all going to be fighting with one another to stay out of ninth place. Every point counts, even if Gurney probably wasn’t stoked that he only got one on the evening.

8. BBC America pls

They didn’t do it again so I’m just gonna put fun walk-ons in this space for you to enjoy until BBC America changes that. This week, it’s Michael van Gerwen, who employs one of the last good uses of “Seven Nation Army” at a sporting event.

9. What to watch next week

The Darts are heading to Germany for the first time in Premier League history. Sadly, there are no German competitors in the field — this is sad that will become obvious for when they head to Barney’s hometown of Rotterdam on April 19 — and the schedule is mostly fine. The three matches in the middle are fine, but the bookends should be fire. To start, the two men atop the table will square off. To end, Scotland’s two best darting exports will main event the evening. Both matches should be fantastic.

Full schedule of action for Week 4:

Michael Smith v. Simon Whitlock
Gerwyn Price v. Mensur Suljovic
Michael van Gerwen v. Daryl Gurney
Rob Cross v. Raymond van Barneveld
Peter Wright v. Gary Anderson