The 9.30am phone call
Huybrechts had been warned the day might turn. Someone in the field was unwell, he was told, and there was a chance he would be needed. The confirmation arrived by phone at around 9.30am on Thursday: a PDC official asking whether he could get to Dortmund that day.
“I was like, dancing around the house just before I picked up,” he told DartsNews afterwards. He rang a fellow Belgian to drive him, they met in the early afternoon and covered the three hours to the Westfalenhalle with no hotel booked at the other end, because Friday was a day off for his half of the draw. The plan was to play and then go straight home. “Eric’s going to drive and I’m going to fall asleep,” he said. “It’s going to be very good.”
The man he replaced was Luke Humphries, last year’s beaten finalist, who pulled out with gastroenteritis. The PDC does not leave a bye when that happens: the place goes to the next man down the European Tour Order of Merit, along with the fixture attached to it. That fixture was Searle.
Huybrechts averaged 103.81, and nobody else reached 100
A six-hour round trip on a few hours’ notice is not the usual preparation for a major. It produced the best darts of the night by a clear margin. On dartn.de’s account he took a 5-1 lead with legs of 15 and 11 darts and shut the match with an 89 checkout. His 103.81 was more than four points clear of anything else thrown in Dortmund on Thursday.
Bars scaled from a baseline of 85. Seven of Thursday’s eight winners are shown; Ross Smith is left out because outlets report his average differently. Source: DartsNews and dartn.de match data.
What makes the 6-1 stranger still is that Searle played well. His 98.59 was the fourth-highest average of the night from anyone, winner or loser, and it bought him a single leg. Two men threw at close to tournament-winning level in the same match and one of them lost by five. If you want the arithmetic behind figures like these, our guide to the three-dart average sets out what separates a 95 from a 104.
European Championship round one: the last three results
Huybrechts’ win came in the late part of a session that was still running when we covered Luke Woodhouse’s nine-darter and the first five Thursday results. These are the three ties that completed the opening night.
| Winner | Loser | Legs | Avg W | Avg L |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kim Huybrechts | Ryan Searle (21) | 6-1 | 103.81 | 98.59 |
| Gian van Veen (8) | Andrew Gilding (25) | 6-4 | 95.21 | 93.62 |
| Ross Smith (1) | Karel Sedlacek (32) | 6-4 | — | — |
Gian van Veen began the defence of his title the hard way. By dartn.de’s account Andrew Gilding led 3-2, pegged him back to 4-4 with two 14-darters and a 70 finish, and had a chance to force 5-5 before Van Veen closed it out with a 13-darter and a 70 of his own. Four of the last five legs went to the champion.
Ross Smith, the top seed by virtue of topping the European Tour list, was scruffier: dartn.de counted 19 missed doubles, and he needed several attempts at a finish from 5-4 before a 23-darter settled it.
The countback that decided nothing
Here is the part that only looks like a coincidence. Huybrechts and Karel Sedlacek finished the European Tour season on exactly the same money, ÂŁ34,500. Sedlacek was placed 32nd on countback and took the final qualifying spot; Huybrechts was 33rd and went home. We set out how that split happened in our draw analysis, written before anyone knew Humphries would fall ill.
Both men ended up in Dortmund on Thursday night anyway. Sedlacek, the one who had won the tie-break, lost 6-4. Huybrechts, the one who had lost it, won 6-1 on 103.81 and is in the last 16. The countback that kept him out of the tournament delayed his arrival by four days and cost him a hotel room.
It is worth £20,000 to him so far, against the £7,500 a first-round loser collects. He said afterwards that the win had already moved him nine places up the live rankings, and he was blunt about what that means after a season spent looking the wrong way: “The goal was keep your Tour Card. The main goal, that was like the big red flag, keep your Tour Card.” And now: “I’m just looking up now, not looking down anymore.”
Who does Huybrechts play in the second round?
Stephen Bunting, on Saturday afternoon, over the best of 19 legs. That eight-leg jump from round one is the part of the Dortmund format that tends to undo anyone who scraped through, and Bunting scraped through about as narrowly as it gets — 6-5 over Danny Noppert on 89.81, the lowest winning average of the night.
| Second round tie | Round one results |
|---|---|
| Ross Smith v Damon Heta | Smith 6-4 Sedlacek / Heta 6-5 Wade |
| Gian van Veen v Luke Woodhouse | Van Veen 6-4 Gilding / Woodhouse 6-3 Van Duijvenbode |
| Cameron Menzies v Gerwyn Price | Menzies 6-3 Zonneveld / Price 6-2 Cross |
| Stephen Bunting v Kim Huybrechts | Bunting 6-5 Noppert / Huybrechts 6-1 Searle |
The other half of the first round runs on Friday evening, with Luke Littler against William O’Connor and Michael van Gerwen against Kevin Doets among the eight ties; the full bottom half is in our draw analysis, and the rest of the season sits on the 2026 calendar. Huybrechts, meanwhile, had a free Friday he had not planned for, at home, three hours away.