Jose de Sousa made it back-to-back PDC titles with victory at Players Championship 15 in Milton Keynes on Wednesday, defeating Ryan Searle 8-7 in the final at the Marshall Arena.<\/p>\n
De Sousa, who won Players Championship 14 on Tuesday and hit a 127 average in Monday’s Players Championship 13, continued his remarkable week at the Marshall Arena to scoop another \u00a310,000 title.<\/p>\n
The Grand Slam of Darts champion survived a match dart from Searle in the final, having produced a 112 average in a 7-2 semi-final success over Rob Cross.<\/p>\n
A tight final saw Searle produce a whopping 161 checkout to land the first break of throw for a 5-4 lead, and after De Sousa missed a dart at tops to make it 6-6, Searle looked set to double his ProTour title tally.<\/p>\n
However, after De Sousa held throw with a 135 combination for a 12-darter, the next leg saw Searle miss the bullseye for the match, allowing the Portuguese to pin double ten to take the contest to a deciding leg.<\/p>\n
The final leg saw Searle unable to snatch the darts away from De Sousa, as the world number ten – with the advantage of throw – sealed the title with a 102 checkout.<\/p>\n
“It feels great to win repeat titles,” De Sousa reflected. “It’s something I didn’t expect at all.<\/p>\n
“Ryan played really well but he missed at the end and I punished him. It doesn’t make me happy to do that but that’s the game.<\/p>\n
“I wouldn’t say players are scared of me now, but I would say they respect me as a player. I think I deserve that after all my hard work.”<\/p>\n
De Sousa, who hit 34 trademark 180s across another impressive day of darts – with Searle’s 18 being the next-highest tally – enjoyed victories over Jonathan Worsley and Rowby-John Rodriguez in the opening two rounds.<\/p>\n
The Portuguese number one then overcame Kevin Doets and Jeff Smith to reach the quarter-finals, where he avenged his Premier League final loss to Jonny Clayton.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Searle’s run to the final sees him catapult himself back into the provisional ProTour Order of Merit qualification places for the Betfred World Matchplay.<\/p>\n
Searle, who is targeting a Winter Gardens debut in July, took the scalps of Gary Anderson and Joe Cullen en route to the final, but saw his bid for a second PDC ranking title fall just short.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere on Day Three, Ian White hit the fourth nine-darter of Super Series 4 in a 6-4 second round defeat to Ron Meulenkamp.<\/p>\n
Adrian Lewis continued his improved form with a first Players Championship quarter-final of the year, while Croatia’s Boris Krcmar reached the last eight for the first time in a ProTour event.<\/p>\n
A resurgent Cross scored his first victory over Michael van Gerwen in three years in the quarter-finals, as the Dutchman’s wait for a first title of 2021 goes on.<\/p>\n
PDC Super Series 4 concludes on Thursday with Players Championship 16 as players return for a final time this week to compete for a further \u00a375,000 in prize money.<\/p>\n
2021 Players Championship 15 Quarter-Finals<\/strong> Semi-Finals<\/strong> Final<\/strong> Jose de Sousa made it back-to-back PDC titles with victory at Players Championship 15 in Milton Keynes on Wednesday, defeating…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[124],"tags":[],"lang":"en","translations":{"de":3366,"en":3363},"pll_sync_post":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pdc.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3363"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pdc.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pdc.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pdc.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pdc.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3363"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pdc.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3365,"href":"https:\/\/pdc.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3363\/revisions\/3365"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pdc.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pdc.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pdc.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pdc.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWednesday June 16
\nLast 16<\/strong>
\nRyan Searle 6-3 Rusty-Jake Rodriguez
\nBoris Krcmar 6-4 Niels Zonneveld
\nAdrian Lewis 6-2 Maik Kuivenhoven
\nStephen Bunting 6-4 Damon Heta
\nJos\u00e9 de Sousa 6-3 Jeff Smith
\nJonny Clayton 6-3 Vincent van der Voort
\nRob Cross 6-4 Michael van Gerwen
\nPeter Wright 6- 2 Mervyn King<\/p>\n
\nRyan Searle 6-2 Boris Krcmar
\nStephen Bunting 6-2 Adrian Lewis
\nJos\u00e9 de Sousa 6-5 Jonny Clayton
\nRob Cross 6-5 Peter Wright<\/p>\n
\nRyan Searle 7-4 Stephen Bunting
\nJos\u00e9 de Sousa 7-2 Rob Cross<\/p>\n
\nJose de Sousa 8-7 Ryan Searle<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"