Peter Wright defeated Ryan Searle 11-10 in a thrilling final to win the 2021 Ladbrokes Players Championship in Minehead on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Wright was left elated and relieved after claiming the title for the first time, having almost been made to pay for inexplicably busting a 129 checkout for what would have been an 11-9 win.<\/p>\n
Crowd favourite Searle came back to force a deciding leg, before piling the pressure on Wright with a visit of 177 to leave 24 for the title.<\/p>\n
However, Wright held his nerve with a match-winning 62 checkout, pinning double 16 with his last dart to pick up the last silverware before the World Championship and the \u00a3100,000 star prize.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s the only final I\u2019ve never played in, I enjoyed it,” said Wright.<\/p>\n
“I knew it was going to be a tough game against Ryan; it\u2019s taken a little while for him to settle and show what he can do on TV. He\u2019s an immense player.”<\/p>\n
“In the second half of the match I was going at Ryan\u2019s pace and I was thinking ‘I’m running out of energy here’. I took a breather and lucky enough I got through.”<\/p>\n
“The guys who normally do well in this tournament do okay in the next one so it\u2019s nice to do well in this one.”<\/p>\n
“Obviously, I\u2019ve got to back my big mouth up because I said I’m going to win the Worlds, so I\u2019ve got to get back on the practice board and make sure I\u2019m sharp. I believe I will be World Champion come January 3.”<\/p>\n
Earlier in the evening, Wright cruised past Jonny Clayton 11-6 in the semi-finals, having defeated six-time champion Michael van Gerwen 10-6 in the quarter-finals as the \u00a3500,000 tournament reached its climax with the final two sessions.<\/p>\n
A breakthrough weekend for Searle saw the Devonian edge out Daryl Gurney 10-9 in one of the games of the weekend in the quarter-finals, before ending the charge of Brendan Dolan in the semi-finals.<\/p>\n
Searle’s run to the final sees the 34-year-old move into the top 16 on the PDC Order of Merit for the first time.<\/p>\n
Attention now turns to the 2021\/22 World Championship, which begins on December 15 at London’s Alexandra Palace.<\/p>\n
2021 Ladbrokes Players Championship Finals Evening Session Final<\/strong> Peter Wright defeated Ryan Searle 11-10 in a thrilling final to win the 2021 Ladbrokes Players Championship in Minehead on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4082,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[124],"tags":[],"lang":"en","translations":{"de":4084,"en":4081},"pll_sync_post":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pdc.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4081"}],"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=4081"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pdc.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4083,"href":"https:\/\/pdc.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4081\/revisions\/4083"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pdc.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pdc.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pdc.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pdc.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nSchedule of Play
\nSunday November 28
\nAfternoon Session
\nMain Stage
\nQuarter-Finals<\/strong>
\nBrendan Dolan 10-4 Jose de Sousa
\nRyan Searle 10-9 Daryl Gurney
\nPeter Wright 10-6 Michael van Gerwen
\nJonny Clayton 10-3 Vincent van der Voort<\/p>\n
\nMain Stage
\nSemi-Finals<\/strong>
\nRyan Searle 11-6 Brendan Dolan
\nPeter Wright 11-6 Jonny Clayton<\/p>\n
\nPeter Wright 11-10 Ryan Searle<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"