Players Championship 25 & 26 Breakdown: Coates Makes History, Bialecki Strikes Twice in Hildesheim

Players Championship 25: Coates Makes History

Henry Coates won Players Championship 25 in Hildesheim, beating Damon Heta 8-4 in the final with a 104.88 average — remarkable in itself for a 20-year-old, but the real story is what Coates didn't have going in. He doesn't hold a PDC Tour Card, having entered as a top-up player from the Challenge Tour. His win makes him only the fifth player in PDC history to claim a ranking title without one.

Oddly, Heta actually out-averaged the champion — 106.11 to 104.88 — and came agonisingly close to a nine-dart leg in the final itself, needing a 10th dart to finish after starting perfectly. It wasn't enough. Coates took the leg, and with it the title.

Coates' Path to the Final

Coates dropped just four legs across his last 16 and quarter-final matches combined, beating Bradley Brooks 6-4 and then whitewashing Christian Kist 6-0, before seeing off Jeffrey de Graaf 7-3 in the semi-final. It wasn't a fluke run through a weak side of the draw — this was a genuinely dominant day's work from a player who, by his own admission, wasn't even supposed to be a firm fixture on the ProTour this year.

There was drama elsewhere too. Both Gian van Veen and Michael van Gerwen— two of the biggest names in the field — bowed out early, a reminder of just how unforgiving a single-day ProTour event can be even for the game's best.

Players Championship 26: Bialecki's Déjà Vu

Twenty-four hours later, at the same venue, Sebastian Bialecki won Players Championship 26 — his second PDC ranking title, claimed exactly a year to the day since his first, which also came in Hildesheim. Bialecki trailed Mario Vandenbogaerde 5-3 in the final before reeling off five of the last six legs to win 8-6.

Vandenbogaerde's run to the final is a story in its own right: “Super Mario” is 53 years old, and reaching a PDC ranking final at that age — against a field stacked with players a third of his age — is exactly the kind of result that makes the ProTour worth watching every week.

Bialecki's Path to the Final

Bialecki's day included a 6-2 win over the previous day's PC25 runner-up, Damon Heta — the Australian responding to his heartbreak final loss by immediately running into the weekend's form player again. Heta's own day at PC26 was a rollercoaster: he also beat Raymond van Barneveld — the 59-year-old legend, still competing with 26 PDC titles and 10 career nine-darters to his name — before eventually falling to Bialecki.

The Nine-Darter — and Beau Greaves' Crossover Weekend

The standout individual moment of the weekend belonged to Scott Williams, who hit a nine-dart finish against Callan Rydz during PC26 — his third career nine-darter. It was the only perfect leg of the two days, but not the only headline moment: Beau Greaves, fresh off winning the Women's World Matchplay just days earlier, entered PC26 and promptly averaged 106 and then 104 in her first two matches — a serious statement of intent on the mixed ProTour — before eventually losing to Heta.

Coates, meanwhile, proved his PC25 win was no one-off. He turned up at PC26 the very next day and averaged 109.34 and 105.79 across two more wins before losing to Justin Hood — arguably an even more eye-catching level of scoring than the average that won him the title 24 hours earlier.

Best Averages of the Weekend

Put every headline average from the two days side by side and Coates actually tops his own title-winning number twice over — a sign of just how well he was striking the board across both events, not just in the final that mattered.

What It Means for the Rankings

Henry Coates' maiden title vaults him into the world's top 100 for the first time — a 30-place jump to world number 95 on the PDC Order of Merit, with his prize money now standing at £30,750. It also lifts him into the top 64 of the Players Championship Order of Merit, the table that determines qualification for the season-ending Players Championship Finals.

For Sebastian Bialecki, a second ranking title further consolidates a Tour Card he's held since 2025, and pushes his season prize money past the £145,000 mark. Neither result is likely to trouble the very top of the Order of Merit, but both matter enormously for the players themselves — Coates in particular now has genuine momentum to build a case for a Tour Card of his own via the ProTour route rather than relying on top-up invitations.

Track exactly where every player stands after these results on the live PDC Order of Merit and ProTour rankings, or see how Van Veen and Van Gerwen's recent form compares on our World Matchplay final breakdown.