The Grand Slam of Darts is heading into the hot phase. While Ryan Searle shone in the match with a spectacular 9-darter, Gerwyn Price underlined his impressive form with another top performance.
Ryan Searle won his third preliminary round duel at the Grand Slam of Darts in style. At 5:3 in the legs against Nathan Rafferty, “Heavy Metal” managed a 9-darter to win.
“I don’t know how the dart went in on the double. I was off balance. I just threw it and luckily it went in,” Searle commented on his feat in an interview with Sky Sports.
With his success against Rafferty, number 16 in the darts world rankings qualified for the round of 16 in Group D behind Gerwyn Price.
Keyword Price: The 2021 world champion celebrated his third win in the third game on Monday evening with a 5-1 win against Gian van Veen. The “Iceman” once again achieved an absolute top average with 112.3 points per shot. The Welshman had previously beaten Searle with an average of 110.51.
Darts: Gerwyn Price meets Gary Anderson
Price will now face Gary Anderson in the round of 16. The “Flying Scotsman” won his third preliminary round match 5-1 against Steve Lennon and also benefited from the fact that Luke Humphries was able to prevail against Dirk van Duijvenbode with the same result.
For world champion Michael Smith, however, the Grand Slam of Darts is already over. The Englishman lost 1:5 against James Wade and therefore ended up behind Wade and Krzysztof Ratajski due to the worse leg difference.
“To be fair, he wasn’t in form, but I’m James Wade and I do what I do. I think I handled the pressure a little better than he did,” said “The Machine” summing up his win against the ” “Bully Boy”.