Darts world champion Michael Smith completed his mandatory task after a long period of trepidation on his return to London’s “Ally Pally” for the World Championships.
The Englishman, who secured the biggest title in darts for the first time in January, won his opening match against the very strong Dutchman Kevin Doets 3-2 in sets, but his opponent caused him problems for a long time.
Before the defeat against Smith, Doets had at least been able to celebrate success on the big stage. He clearly won his first round match, which was also the first game of this year’s World Cup, against Stowe Buntz from Canada 3-0 and thus made the meeting with Smith perfect. He also had the “Bully Boy” on the verge of defeat.
Veteran Simon Whitlock (Australia) also had a lot of problems in his opening game. The 2010 World Cup finalist was initially behind against the blatant outsider Paolo Nebrida (Philippines) and had to go the full distance. In the last set he missed a bunch of match darts, but Nebrida couldn’t take advantage of the mistakes. Whitlock used his sixth match dart to win 3-2.
But a big opponent awaits him in the second round. There, “The Wizard” will meet a two-time world champion in the Scot Gary Anderson on Saturday (11:10 p.m./DAZN and Sport1). Whitlock most recently failed in the second round in 2022 and 2023.
In addition, the Austrian Rusty-Jake Rodriguez was surprisingly eliminated in the first round. In his opening match against Cameron Menzies (Scotland), the 22-year-old saw no country and went down 3-0.