Badger Prins wins Knack Open
Dave “The Badger” Prins came out on top of a field of 73 entrants for this year’s Knack Open with a 6-4 win over Hetton number one Dickie Young in a high quality final.
Many of the region’s top darters landed in the Knack with players from as far as Redcar to Ashington to Consett competing for the title .
Prins’s run to the final included a mouth-watering first round clash against his Knack Premier League nemesis Paul Williams which saw Prins win 3-1, before victories over Ouston’s multiple-competition winner James Forster.
Prins then had three wins over fellow Knack players, Tony Wood, Chris Vaughan and Ryan Joyce 4-0,4-2 and 4-2 respectively to secure his place in the final.
Dickie Young enjoyed wins against a string of top county players as he made his way to the final, Young beat David Maitland in the last 64 before seeing off Redcar’s Jonny Gardner to move into the last 16 where he prevailed against Tyne & Wear A team player Geoff Murray 4-3.
Young then beat the Tyne & Wear captain Dave Stokell by the same scoreline before a 4-1 win over 2013 Champion Phil Borthwick.
Event Organiser and Knack Premier League founder Neil Rose, who was runner up to Borthwick in 2013, made the quarter-finals as did former Lakeside qualifier Butch Knighton, who beat Tyne & Wears number one player and 2012 champion, Andy Chalmers, and Ashington’s Ian Gleeson on route.
Hartlepool’s Claire Stainsby was the winner in the Ladies Competition as she beat Ushaw Moor’s Claire Stewart 4-2 in the final. Losing semi finalists were Toni-Lee Bowstead, who hit a brilliant 170 checkout earlier in the day, and Gateshead’s Tyne and Wear player Ann-Marie Urwin.
Meanwhile, Spiller Henderson and Anth Skelton triumphed in the Blind Pairs competition beating Ryan Joyce and Dan Gillibrand 5-4 in the final.
The winners had enjoyed a 4-2 win over Watson and Dunn in the semi-finals while Joyce and Gillibrand beat McGowan and Patton 4-0 at the same stage.
Henderson and Skelton had progressed through the stages, beating Richardson and Hodgson 4-3 in the last 16 and Williams and McCluskey 4-1 in the quarter finals.