A 5-0 Start the Home Favourite Never Undid
Van Veen was the highest-ranked player Menzies met all day and the one the Den Bosch crowd had come for. He did not win a leg until the match was effectively gone. Menzies reeled off the first five, scoring heavily enough through that opening burst to put the final beyond a normal comeback, and although van Veen answered with three legs in a row to get within 5-3 and took one more after that, Menzies was never caught and closed it out 8-4.
It is the sort of finish that has become recognisable. All four of Menzies’ ranking-title wins have come in a first-to-eight final and he has never conceded more than five legs in one.
Seven Wins in a Day, Including a Semi-Final Against a 110-Plus Average
Players Championship days are brutal arithmetic: the champion plays seven matches between morning and night, and any one of them can end the run. Menzies opened against Wales’ Nick Kenny, then needed a deciding leg to get past Canada’s Jim Long in the second round before the draw stopped being kind.
The hardest of the seven was the semi-final. Kevin Doets averaged in the 110s — the outstanding scoring performance of the day by anyone in Den Bosch — and still lost 7-5, because Menzies kept finding the legs that mattered. Doets has form here too: he was runner-up to Jermaine Wattimena in the Players Championship 27 final in August.
The scorelines below show how a Players Championship day is built. Everything from the first round to the quarter-finals is a race to six legs, the semi-finals go to seven and the final to eight, so the matches get one leg longer exactly when the opponents get harder. Menzies won five straight races to six, then the two longest matches of his day back to back.
Cameron Menzies — Players Championship 29, from Round 2
The Second Title He Has Won at a Players Championship 29
Menzies won his maiden PDC ranking title at Players Championship 29 in October 2024, beating Stephen Bunting8-4 in Leicester. Two years on, at another Players Championship 29, he beat van Veen by exactly the same score. Coincidence rather than portent, but a neat one — and the four finals together show a player who does not lose them.
| Event | Venue | Final opponent | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Players Championship 29, Oct 2024 | Leicester | Stephen Bunting | 8–4 |
| Players Championship 11, Apr 2025 | Leicester | Peter Wright | 8–3 |
| Players Championship 23, Jul 2026 | Leicester | Cristo Reyes | 8–5 |
| Players Championship 29, Sep 2026 | Den Bosch | Gian van Veen | 8–4 |
Three of the four came at the Mattioli Arena in Leicester, which makes Den Bosch the first ProTour title Menzies has won away from the venue where he learned to win them. The other pattern in that table is how little he gives away once he reaches a final.
Source: PDC, Sky Sports, dartsnews.com
A Season That Began With a Fine and a Suspended Ban
January was as bad as this September has been good. Menzies went out of the World Championship in the first round and repeatedly punched the underside of the drinks table on stage afterwards, an outburst that cost him £2,500 and a four-month ban suspended until July 2027 when it surfaced in the Darts Regulation Authority’s case list in August. He injured his hand doing it.
What followed was the best run of his career. In July he won Players Championship 23 in Leicester, beating Cristo Reyes 8-5 in the final. At the World Matchplay later that month he took out Luke Humphries 10-7 in the first round with a 170 finish, his first win on the Blackpool stage — then, leading Ross Smith 2-1 in round two, he was taken ill on stage with high blood pressure, fainted, and had to withdraw. Two months later he has won seven matches in a day.
Van Veen Runs Out of Room at Home
Van Veen had the better day’s numbers on his way through. He beat Tommy Morris 6-1, Daniel Klose 6-2, then produced an average of about 104 to see off Darius Labanauskas 6-4, and came through three consecutive tight ones: 6-5 against Nathan Aspinall, 6-5 against Chris Dobeyin the quarter-final and 7-5 against Ireland’s William O’Connor in the semi-final.
Four of his six wins were decided by one or two legs — a long day’s work before a final he never once led.
Two Nine-Darters in One Day
Neither of the day’s perfect legs belonged to a finalist. Cristo Reyes — the man Menzies beat for the Players Championship 23 title in July — hit one in the early rounds, and Germany’s Max Hopp hit another. Two nine-dart finishes in a single day is unusual even on a ProTour floor, where hundreds of legs are thrown across a morning and an evening.
What It Means for the Rankings
Menzies collects £15,000 from the £150,000 pot and van Veen £10,000. Both figures land on the ProTour Order of Merit, which decides the 64-player field for the Players Championship Finals in Minehead, and on the two-year Order of Meritthat seeds everything else — including the World Championship.
Players Championship 30 follows at the same Den Bosch venue on Wednesday, the second half of the double-header, and then the floor goes quiet for a week: the World Grand Prix and its double-start format begin in Leicester on 28 September. Track where Tuesday’s result leaves everyone on the live PDC Order of Merit.