UK Open 2016 - Third Day

Where the crowd plays beach ball.
The crowd of the UK Open in Minehead might be a little bit different from crowds in other tournaments.
The reason is that Minehead is so out of the way that the darts fans who want to follow the tournament live have no chance but to buy one of the PDC/Butlins packages. There are no other tickets on the market. The packages are quite expensive - an accommodation plus darts package starts for three nights at around 230 pound. For the food and probably the entertainment you have to pay extra. Some of the accommodation is self catering. Despite the price all 5000 UK Open packages were sold out. As well sold out are already the players Championship finals in November. The advanced sale for the UK Open 2016 only just started. and might be 2000 packages are already sold.

While on the first two days the crowd spread over all three venues on the last day of the tournament- as all matches were played on the main stage - the arena was packed to the last seat with all 5000 cheerful and dressed up fans. Might be the crowd pays more attention then in other tournaments - the party takes place outside the venue all over the resort. But on the last evening the crowd played beach ball over the heads of the security that dived after the balls. The wasted attempts to catch the balls even more stirred up the atmosphere. It is not quite clear how it affected the players on stage. Peter Wrights comment was he had only been afraid the balls would land on the stage and that he was used to all sorts of happenings due to Premier League.

There were some problems on the last day of the UK Open. Before one Walk-On the camera man had disappeared. At another time the player was there but his walk-on girl not. And then the big scoreboards failed for some matches and one was groping in the dark regarding score lines, legs played and scores thrown. Luckily the players had no problems as they could read the chalkers boards and I only then realised how often Michael van Gerwen has a look at his own scoreboard and at the scoreboard of his opponent. Not that he has to worry at the moment; he blasted all three opponents on this day. So one couldn't say those three matches were really exciting. While Barry Lynn and Phil Taylor, who by the way produced beside Michael van Gerwen the best performance, at least tried to fight, Peter Wright seemed to have given up hope even before the final started. Nevertheless he almost threw a nine-darter in the second last leg - what a pity he didn't hit the double 12.

The quarterfinals were not really thrilling either - Jelle Klaasen, Phil Taylor, Peter Wright and Michael van Gerwen were just too strong. Kyle Anderson didn't seem to be present at all on stage and Mark Webster had no chance at all against Phil Taylor, Joe Cullen's fight back started too late, he first had too much respect for the big stage, the big crowd and his opponent and it took some legs before Barry Lynn managed to get into his game. But hats off to the qualifier and his achievements at the weekend - to be sure it was the success story of this year's UK Open. Yet it really hadn't looked good for him after he had qualified. He just didn't have the 450 pound he would have needed for the weekend in Minehead. But his friends and acquaintances collected the money and organised the transport to Minehead. Hopefully this unbelievable story will go on as positive as it started.

It was a little bit annoying the draw produced the Taylor/van Gerwen match already in the semi-finals - looking at the performances over the weekend that should have been the final. Should Taylor get on and improve it could be possible we will see quite a few van Gerwen/Taylor finals this year. The other players probably will not like it; their chances to win tournaments would be even reduced further.

So we had in the end the same final as last year and everything beside a clear win for van Gerwen would have been a real surprise. Perhaps this was the reason that during the final the beach ball players started again though they didn't forget to support Peter Wright.

All in all the UK Open again were an interesting tournament again. It was quite revealing when Jelle Klaasen answered to the question how he had managed to improve so much that the reason was that now he had a baby he finally knew wherefore he played. It was almost touching to watch amateur Barry Lynn playing and to hear what he had to say. It was even more touching to listen to Australian Kyle Anderson when he told what he and his family take on so that he can play for some time in England and that it is very tough for him to be separated from his family even when he now lives his darting dream. And those are in the end the stories which really make up the sport of darts.













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