Dutch Darts Championship Round One: Bunting Faces the Drop

Round one results in full

Sixteen ties were split across Friday’s two sessions, best of 11 legs throughout, and the seeds do not appear until Saturday. The Dutch players who came through Thursday’s host-nation qualifier were spread across both sessions: Heine Uuldriks and Jimmy van Schie won, while Richard Veenstra lost 6-2 to William O’Connor.

The two ties that closed the session were the two that mattered most to Saturday. Damon Heta beat Maikel Verberk 6-4, so defending champion Jonny Clayton opens against the Australian rather than a European Tour debutant. Then Michael Smithsurvived a decider against Stephen Burton to win 6-5, which keeps alive the last live route into Dortmund from below the cut. Because Smith came through the Tour Card Holder qualifier rather than entering as a seed, his prize money counts from round one — but he needs to reach at least the semi-finals to climb into the 32, so beating Nathan Aspinall on Saturday evening would only be the start of it.

How Sedlacek moved the cut line

The top 32 of the European Tour Order of Merit go to Dortmund next week, and Maastricht is the last chance to move. Before Friday, Bunting held the 32nd and final place on £33,000, with Sedlacek £2,000 behind him in 33rd.

Reaching round two is worth £3,500, and that money is guaranteed the moment a player wins in round one. Sedlacek’s 6-4 win over Rydz therefore took him to £34,500 – past Bunting, and exactly level with Martin Schindler and Kim Huybrechts, the two men who had been 31st and 30th.

That is the whole story of Bunting’s evening, and he was not playing. The 32nd place is now Sedlacek’s, Bunting is first out, and the ranking rule that the pre-tournament mathsturned on has not gone away: a pre-qualified player who loses his first match of a European Tour event is paid in full but credited with nothing on the European Tour Order of Merit. Bunting is seeded, so round two against Menzies is his first match. Win it and he is on £38,000, clear of everyone currently near the line. Lose it and he stays on £33,000 and depends on other results.

Gurney’s reprieve lasted one match

Daryl Gurney was not supposed to be in Maastricht at all. He and Mike De Decker were called up on Thursday as the highest-ranked losers from the deciding round of the Tour Card Holder qualifier, after Luke Humphries and Joe Cullen withdrew. For Gurney it reopened a European Championship race that had looked finished, although the arithmetic was brutal: on his total, only a run to the final would have carried him into the 32.

Sebastian Bialecki beat him 6-4, and that is that. De Decker, the other replacement, lost 6-4 to Niels Zonneveld in the same session. Both call-ups were gone inside three hours of each other.

Bialecki is the one who gained. Now on a guaranteed £29,500, he needs to reach the quarter-finals to pass Bunting — but a quarter-final pays £8,000, which would leave him on £34,000, still £500 short of the three men tied on £34,500. To be certain of Dortmund he has to go further than that, and his route starts against top seed Gian van Veen.

Rob Cross withdrew after reaching Maastricht

Rob Crosshad travelled to the Netherlands and been lifted into the seeds by the earlier withdrawals. He then pulled out and went home, posting on Instagram that he had “had to pull out of the tournament and return back home due to personal reasons”.

Brendan Dolan was called up in his place and enters directly in round two, which is where Cross was due to start. Cross’s own place in Dortmund was never in question and he is expected there next week. He is the third withdrawal from this event, after Humphries and Cullen, and that is before counting Luke Littler, who never entered.

A host-nation debutant beat a man averaging over 101

The best match of the afternoon belonged to Heine Uuldriks, one of the Dutch federation’s qualifiers, playing his first European Tour match. He went 3-0 down to Ricardo Pietreczko, won three legs in a row to lead 5-4, was pegged back to 5-5, then took out 81 on the bull in 12 darts to win the decider 6-5. Pietreczko finished with an average above 101 and lost. Uuldriks missed one dart at a double in the entire match.

Afterwards he described it as a fairytale, and said the win was beyond anything he had pictured before walking on. His reward is a round-two tie against Dolan rather than Cross, decided for him overnight by somebody else’s travel plans.

What Saturday does to the cut

Round two is where the seeds come in and where the European Championship field is settled. Three of the ties turn on money that can be worked out to the pound — and one of those is a straight shoot-out between two men level on exactly that figure. Smith’s tie with Aspinall is the fourth that matters, though his route needs a weekend rather than an afternoon.

Huybrechts is the odd case. He lost 6-5 to Jimmy van Schie, another of the home qualifiers, so his £34,500 is now fixed — he cannot add to it, and he spends Saturday watching. An opening win would have taken him to £38,000 and ended the argument.

Menzies, meanwhile, is 28th on £37,000 and already through to Dortmund alongside Dave Chisnall, who matches him on £37,000 and beat Jonas Masalin 6-4 on Friday. Menzies has nothing left to play for in the qualification race, and a chance to end Bunting’s.

Sunday, and then Dortmund

The third round starts at 12:00 UK time on Sunday, with the quarter-finals, semi-finals and final all from 18:00. The champion takes £35,000 from the £230,000 fund. By the time the last dart lands, the 32-man field for the European Championship in Dortmund — 22 to 25 October — will be set.

Full fixtures for the rest of the season are on the 2026 calendar, and the Maastricht draw has the full bracket.