On Sunday evening the Unibet European Darts Championship ended at the König-Pilsener-ARENA in Oberhausen. The 32 best players of the 2020 European Tour competed over four days of action for the coveted TV title and 120.000£ of prize money for the winner. The new European champion is the current world champion Peter Wright who won the title for the first time in his career after an 11:4 in the final against James Wade.
Semi-final number one was the expected close call. Devon Petersen started the match the way he had finished his quarterfinal against Ian White the night before: Very high scoring and two great high finishes of 132 and 127. But subsequently James Wade managed to keep the match open despite Petersen’s high average and a total of nine 180s and even had a narrow lead before the African Warrior took the lead at 8:6.
A crazy final phase of the game followed: First Wade won four consecutive legs and looked like the winner at 10:8, before Petersen fought back with great finishes under pressure and forced a decisive 21st leg at 10:10. Here it was The Machine’s great experience and strong nerves that helped him to win. A 180 in the perfect moment decided the game and the Englishman secured his spot in the final of the 2020 European Darts Championship.
“In the end I played a bit better than Devon and the best thing is that it shuts critics up that keep asking me if I am still one of the best players in the world,” a combative James Wade said after the thriller.
The second game in the round of the last four was as exciting as it was peculiar. Jonny Clayton, who had only been given underdog chances before the final day, managed to keep his game against world champion Peter Wright very close. Both players had an average of over 100 and “The Ferret” from Wales made “Snakebite” work extremely hard, so that it was 7:7 after fourteen legs. Wright then took a narrow lead, before Clayton made a serious mistake at 8:9. With 111 points remaining, the first dart went into Triple 20, before Clayton aimed for the 9 and left himself 42 points. With the last dart he then hit the doubles 16 – 10 points too little to equalize the game. Wright could capitalise, secured both the 18th and 19th leg for the final score of 11:8 and got through to the final.
The current PDC world champion was able to demonstrate all his skills once again in the final game of the tournament. In a rather one-sided match Peter Wright opened up a gap early and in the end won clearly by 11:4 against James Wade. The Machine missed too many chances on the doubles and therefore had nothing to oppose “Snakebite”. Wright himself played an average of 104.33 and thus averaged in triple figures in all his four games. At the end of the game, Wright’s high finishes of 143 and 125 points gave him two spectacular leg wins, which earned him his third PDC major title.
2020 Unibet European Darts Championship, Sunday, semi-finals/ final
Semi-finals
Devon Petersen 10:11 James Wade
Jonny Clayton 8:11 Peter Wright
Final
James Wade 4:11 Peter Wright
