A Final Nobody Wanted to Close Out
Williams gave Sedlacek nine maximums to live with and still lost, which tells you roughly how the last quarter of this final went. The Czech moved 7-5 in front and was one leg from the title. He then missed match darts sitting on 24, and the leg went to Williams.
Williams answered with back-to-back 140s to level it at 7-7 and had the throw in the decider. He opened with a maximum to leave himself 112, then missed treble 20 with his second dart at it. That was the opening. Sedlacek came back to the board needing 32, found double eight, and a career changed shape.
Sky Sports reported that Williams shook hands with his opponent and the officials and then threw his darts onto the floor. Two of the last three legs had been his; the one that mattered was not.
Seven Matches, Nineteen Legs Conceded
A Players Championship is won in a single day across seven matches, and the format tightens as it goes: everything up to the quarter-final is a race to six legs, the semi-final is a race to seven and the final a race to eight. Sedlacek’s day was almost a straight line of escalating resistance.
| Round | Opponent | Format | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Round 1 | Tavis Dudeney | First to 6 | 6–1 |
| Round 2 | Daniel Klose | First to 6 | 6–0 |
| Round 3 | Damon Heta | First to 6 | 6–1 |
| Round 4 | Nathan Aspinall | First to 6 | 6–3 |
| Quarter-final | Chris Dobey | First to 6 | 6–5 |
| Semi-final | Niels Zonneveld | First to 7 | 7–2 |
| Final | Scott Williams | First to 8 | 8–7 |
The first four matches cost him five legs in total. The final alone cost him seven. In between came the two that actually decided his day: a 6-5 quarter-final against top seed Chris Dobey, recovered from an early deficit, and a 7-2 semi-final against Niels Zonneveldthat was the most comfortable win of anyone’s afternoon at that stage.
Source: dartsnews.com, Darts World, Sky Sports
Damon Heta was beaten 6-1 in the third round with Sedlacek scoring at around a 106 average, and Nathan Aspinall went 6-3 in the fourth. Neither of those is a scalp a floor player takes by accident.
Four Days Earlier He Averaged 103 and Lost
Sedlacek was in Amsterdam last weekend for the World Series of Darts Finals, and in the last 16 he put up one of the best losing performances of the tournament: a 103.30 average against Gian van Veen, who averaged 101.52 and still won 10-7. That is the version of this sport that floor players know best: throw well enough to beat most people, meet the one person you can’t, go home.
Four days later, in a hall an hour’s drive south, he won seven matches in an afternoon and evening without ever producing a number as good as the one that had got him nothing.
The Czech Republic Finally Gets a Title
The PDC has staged a European Tour event in Prague for years — Luke Littler beat Luke Humphries in this year’s Czech Darts Open final there — and in all that time no Czech player had won a PDC ranking event anywhere. The closest the country had come was Adam Gawlas, who beat Mario Vandenbogaerde, Luke Littler, Kevin Doets, William O’Connor and Rob Cross to reach the semi-finals of the 2023 UK Open before losing 11-6 to the eventual champion Andrew Gilding. That was a televised run and a national first of its own; it was not a trophy.
Sedlacek and Gawlas have been the Czech Republic’s World Cup of Darts pairing for most of this decade, the senior partner and the prodigy. The 47-year-old got there first, which is not how these things are usually written.
Two Titles in Den Bosch, Two Opposite Finals
This was the second half of a Dutch double-header, and the two finals could hardly have been less alike. On Tuesday, Cameron Menzies won the first five legs against van Veen and was never headed on his way to 8-4. On Wednesday, Sedlacek was pegged back from 7-5, missed seven match darts across the match and needed a deciding leg. Same stage, same prize, consecutive days, and about as wide a gap in temperament as a first-to-eight allows.
Elsewhere on Wednesday the quarter-finals took out three of the best-known names in the building: Michael van Gerwen, Raymond van Barneveld — whose run to the last eight was his best floor day in some time — and Dobey. Jermaine Wattimena lost the other semi-final, 7-4 to Williams.
What the Money Does
Sedlacek takes £15,000 from the £150,000 pot and Williams £10,000. Both 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 Merit that seeds the World Championship and protects a Tour Card. For a player who has spent his PDC career outside the seeded ranks, a winner’s cheque in late September is worth more than the number on it: the Minehead cut-off is close, and so is the qualifying window for Alexandra Palace.
Williams leaves Den Bosch with the better day’s scoring and the worse afternoon. His runner-up cheque moves him meaningfully in the same direction, which is why the darts hit the floor rather than the case.
The floor now goes quiet for a week. The World Grand Prix and its double-start format begin at the Mattioli Arena in Leicester on 28 September. Track where Wednesday’s result leaves everyone on the live PDC Order of Merit.