Peter Wright picked up his second ranking title of 2021 with an outstanding 8-4 defeat of Luke Humphries in Thursday’s Players Championship 16 final in Milton Keynes.<\/p>\n
Wright had concluded PDC Super Series 2 with victory in Players Championship 8 in March, and repeated the feat on the fourth day of PDC Super Series 4 to pick up the \u00a310,000 title.<\/p>\n
Although he ended the day in sensational form, Wright followed up comfortable early wins over Scott Williams and Lorenzo Pronk by being taken to a deciding leg by Ryan Joyce and Brendan Dolan.<\/p>\n
Wright found himself 5-3 down to Joyce before claiming the final three legs for a victory which he sealed with a 170 checkout, and held off Dolan’s fightback from 5-2 down to book his quarter-final spot.<\/p>\n
There, he powered past Rob Cross with a 103 average in a 6-1 win, and then averaged over 106 in a ruthless 7-0 semi-final whitewash of Callan Rydz.<\/p>\n
He extended his winning run to 13 straight legs by moving into a 3-0 lead in the final with legs of 15, 13 and 11 darts, twice breaking Humphries’ throw.<\/p>\n
The UK Open finalist battled back to 3-2 before Wright finished an 11-darter and took the next two legs to lead 6-2, moving his in-running average to 113.<\/p>\n
Back-to-back 14-darters from Humphries saw him continue to battle in his quest for a first senior title as he pulled back to 6-4, but Wright regained breathing space on double 16 before finishing a 13-darter to seal the win.<\/p>\n
“I’m very pleased,” said Wright, who averaged 108.9 in the final and over 100 for the day. “I always seem to leave it until the last day!<\/p>\n
“I was 5-3 down against Ryan Joyce and said ‘I’ll be in the car in a minute, [to wife] Jo’ but he didn’t finish me off. He let me sneak in leg by leg.<\/p>\n
“Luke’s a quality player. I’ve played him many times, and it shows you how good the darts system that we’ve got is that he’s come so far.”<\/p>\n
Humphries has reached the UK Open final and two previous Players Championship deciders in 2021, and showed his quality on Thursday in another fine day.<\/p>\n
He came through deciding legs against Alan Soutar, Rusty-Jake Rodriguez and Steve Beaton, but averaged 107 in a victory over Karel Sedlacek and also overcame Dutch duo Geert Nentjes and Dirk van Duijvenbode in reaching the final.<\/p>\n
Van Duijvenbode enjoyed his first career victory over Gerwyn Price with a 6-3 quarter-final defeat of the World Champion, and he also overcame Premier League winner Jonny Clayton amongst five wins on the day.<\/p>\n
Rydz, meanwhile, also lost out in the semi-finals in his bid to claim a second senior title in his best run since winning Players Championship 2 in February.<\/p>\n
The Bedlington thrower averaged a huge 113 in his second round whitewash of Jack Main, and also saw off John Michael and Adrian Lewis with averages above 102 on the day.<\/p>\n
Two-time World Champion Lewis reached a second successive quarter-final in an encouraging return to form, including a 108.6 average in his first round whitewash of Kai Fan Leung.<\/p>\n
Price followed up his run to Monday’s final by concluding the week with a last eight appearance, while Cross followed up Wednesday’s semi-final with a quarter-final 24 hours later.<\/p>\n
Steve Beaton enjoyed his best run since February as he completed the quarter-final line-up.<\/p>\n
The PDC ProTour circuit will resume next month with PDC Super Series 5 from July 5-8 in Coventry, featuring the final four Players Championship events before the cut-off for the Betfred World Matchplay.<\/p>\n
Players Championship 16 Quarter-Finals<\/strong> Semi-Finals<\/strong> Final<\/strong> Peter Wright picked up his second ranking title of 2021 with an outstanding 8-4 defeat of Luke Humphries in Thursday’s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3375,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[124],"tags":[],"lang":"en","translations":{"de":3377,"en":3374},"pll_sync_post":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pdc.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3374"}],"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=3374"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pdc.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3376,"href":"https:\/\/pdc.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3374\/revisions\/3376"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pdc.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pdc.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pdc.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pdc.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThursday June 17, Marshall Arena, Milton Keynes
\nLast 16<\/strong>
\nAdrian Lewis 6-3 Steve Brown
\nCallan Rydz 6-2 Jason Heaver
\nRob Cross 6-4 Michael Smith
\nPeter Wright 6-5 Brendan Dolan
\nSteve Beaton 6-2 Lewis Williams
\nLuke Humphries 6-5 Rusty-Jake Rodriguez
\nGerwyn Price 6-5 Vincent van der Voort
\nDirk van Duijvenbode 6-2 Jonny Clayton<\/p>\n
\nCallan Rydz 6-3 Adrian Lewis
\nPeter Wright 6-1 Rob Cross
\nLuke Humphries 6-5 Steve Beaton
\nDirk van Duijvenbode 6-3 Gerwyn Price<\/p>\n
\nPeter Wright 7-0 Callan Rydz
\nLuke Humphries 7-3 Dirk van Duijvenbode<\/p>\n
\nPeter Wright 8-4 Luke Humphries<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"