Dutch duo ready to light up Ingliston
Darts
MORE than 1,500 passionate darts fans are expected to attend the evening sessions of the £160,000 Unibet Masters at the Royal Highland Showground at Ingliston tonight and tomorrow, and this afternoon there is sure to be a huge Scottish welcome for two Dutch stars of the game.
Perennially popular Raymond van Barneveld will meet current world No 1 and world champion Mike van Gerwen in a first-round match screened on ITV4. It will surely be a classic contest between one player who has seen and done it all and a young countryman who has burst onto the scene in magnificent style in recent years.
Married just three months ago, 25-year-old MVG, or Mighty Mike, as Van Gerwen is dually known, will start hot favourite over world No 16 Van Barneveld, the former world champion, who at 47 is now, along with 16times world champion Phil Taylor, one of the two oldest players on the Professional Darts Corporation tour.
Those who say that darts is not a sport should be aware of one thing – that in darts, like every other sport, age does wither them and a player’s career is limited by anno domini and, in the case of Van Barneveld, his late-onset Type II diabetes.
“I have never lost so many first and second-round matches as I have lost this year,” said Van Barneveld. “The schedule is way too much and I recently spoke to Phil Taylor and he said that for next year he might have to pick and choose his tournaments and maybe I have to do the same.
“The stress and the travelling and playing late games at night, they are all factors.”
Van Barneveld’s diabetes has also been a reason for his decline this season after winning the Premier League title earlier this year. “It doesn’t help,” he said. “Sometimes I have suffered from excessive sweating and blurred vision. I also have to wear glasses now.”
Van Barneveld is nevertheless happy to be in the Masters, especially given the host nation.
“I get the best reception I get anywhere right here in Scot- land,” said Van Barneveld. “Don’t ask me why, but I love Scotland and maybe that’s why every time I come here I have this army of support. No matter where, be it Aberdeen, Glasgow or Edinburgh, I am really happy to get such great support, and I really don’t have a clue why.”
He genuinely is looking forward to meeting MVG again. Van Barneveld beat the younger man in the Premier League final but the new world champion got his revenge in last weekend’s European Championship semifinal in which he also recorded a nine-dart finish.
According to both men, they get on really well, and travel a lot together, but Van Barneveld admits the challenge posed by the younger man is something to which he’s not yet fully acclimatised. “I’ve been the best player in Holland over the last 20 years,” said Van Barneveld, “but now I am having to get used to the fact that there is someone else who is not only Dutch No 1 but world No 1 and world champion.”
That the two Dutch stars were drawn together is unfortunate but unavoidable, given the present disparity of their rankings – 1 versus 16.
Van Barneveld said: “I was really happy to be in the top 16 because I have been slipping down the rankings this year and I am just pleased to be here, and even if you’re No 16 you still have a chance as long as you get here.”
Mighty Mike van Gerwen married Daphne and honeymooned in Bali three months ago but says marriage hasn’t changed him – they have been together for seven years in all.
What has changed him is the £1 million of prize money – £173,000 in October alone – that he has won in the past 18 months. “It has changed my life, definitely, and we have a bit more luxuries,” he said with a smile, “but the really important thing is that I am enjoying my darts.
“I’m having a great run at the moment and my form is very good so I don’t practise any more than two hours a day. I am full of confidence at the moment, but you never know what happens next in darts.”
Hopefully what will happen next will be a terrific game of darts between arguably the best two non-British players ever.