Swiss Darts Trophy first-round results in full
All 16 first-round matches were played across two sessions on the Friday, best of 11 legs, with the winners inheriting a seed on the Saturday. Two went to a deciding leg, and both were won by the player with the lower average.
| Winner | Score | Loser | Session |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bradley Brooks | 6-4 | Niels Zonneveld | Afternoon |
| William O’Connor | 6-1 | Jani Haavisto | Afternoon |
| Mensur Suljovic | 6-3 | György Jehirszki | Afternoon |
| Karel Sedlacek | 6-4 | Sebastian Białecki | Afternoon |
| Niko Springer | 6-1 | Roman Wellinger | Afternoon |
| Tom Bissell | 6-5 | Joe Cullen | Afternoon |
| Cristo Reyes | 6-4 | Cameron Menzies | Afternoon |
| Rob Cross | 6-3 | Mario Vandenbogaerde | Afternoon |
| Stefan Bellmont | 6-3 | Andrew Gilding | Evening |
| Jeffrey de Graaf | 6-4 | Sietse Lap | Evening |
| Dave Chisnall | 6-5 | Alan Soutar | Evening |
| Maik Kuivenhoven | 6-3 | Raymond van Barneveld | Evening |
| Dirk van Duijvenbode | 6-3 | Bruno Stöckli | Evening |
| Michael Smith | 6-4 | Rob Owen | Evening |
| Damon Heta | 6-2 | Alex Fehlmann | Evening |
| Kevin Doets | 6-3 | Nick Kenny | Evening |
The averages that did not win
Four men averaged over 100 on the Friday and only three of them are still in Basel. Cross’s 105.95 against Mario Vandenbogaerde was the standout — level at 3-3, he took the last three legs and finished the match in 11 darts. Bradley Brooks won a shoot-out with Niels Zonneveldin which both players cleared a ton, Brooks on 100.73 to Zonneveld’s 100.17, and Brooks came from 4-2 down to do it.
Lower down the sheet the arithmetic stops being flattering. Dave Chisnall won 6-5 averaging 82.52 against Soutar’s 90.12 — nearly eight points a visit worse than the man he knocked out — in a deciding leg where both players missed match darts. Tom Bissell beat Joe Cullen6-5 averaging 81.36 to 84.70. And Stöckli pushed Dirk van Duijvenbode to a 98.10 average and still lost 6-3, which is the kind of scoreline that tells you nothing about the match.
Bars are scaled from a 75.00 baseline to make the gaps legible, so bar length is not proportional to the average itself. Only averages reported by at least two outlets are shown. Source: DartsNews; DartsKing; Darts World; Sky Sports.
None of this is a freak Friday. A best-of-11 leg format is short enough that one bad double can outweigh a session of better scoring, which is why a three-dart average predicts results far better over a season than it does over eleven legs. Cross needed six legs to get out of the first round and so did Bissell, and the gap between their averages was more than 24 points.
Bellmont gives Basel its home win
Four Swiss players came through Thursday’s host nation qualifier and three of them lost on the Friday — Roman Wellinger 6-1 to Niko Springer, Alex Fehlmann 6-2 to Damon Heta and Stöckli to van Duijvenbode. Stefan Bellmont did not. Trailing Andrew Gilding, he won five legs on the spin to take it 6-3, and he is reported as only the third Swiss player ever to win a match at this tournament. He meets 16th seed Krzysztof Ratajski on Saturday afternoon.
Two of the evening’s better-known names went opposite ways. Raymond van Barneveld lost 6-3 to Maik Kuivenhoven on an 87.40 average, which closes out his European Tour season without a win on it. Michael Smith, in the field only via the Tour Card Holder Qualifier, came from 3-1 down to beat Rob Owen 6-4 on 90.94; Sky Sports reported him afterwards apologising for how little of the 2026 tour he has played and committing to a full schedule in 2027.
One reserve out of four
The four late withdrawals that reshaped the Basel draw on Thursdaylet in four reserves from the Tour Card Holder Qualifier, each of them a man who had lost his final qualifying match. Friday thinned them out almost completely: Karel Sedlacek beat Sebastian Białecki 6-4, while Soutar, Owen and Nick Kenny all went out. Three of the four replacements leave with the £2,000 first-round cheque.
Sedlacek was the one who earned it the hard way. Down 4-3, he took the break he needed with an 86 finish on the bull and won the last three legs on a 100.20 average. He now plays 11th seed Wessel Nijman for a place in the last 16, which would be worth ÂŁ5,000 against the ÂŁ3,500 he has already guaranteed himself.
What Friday did to the race for Dortmund
Basel is the second-last chance to add to the one-year European Tour table that picks the 32-player field for the European Championship, and Cullen’s defeat was the result with the clearest consequence. He went into the week 33rd, £3,500 behind Stephen Buntingin the last qualifying place; losing in the first round earns him £2,000, which is £1,500 short of the gap. He cannot overhaul Bunting in Switzerland whatever the defending champion does on Saturday, and only the Dutch Darts Championship in Maastricht on 16-18 October is left to him.
Sedlacek is the live case in the other direction, still in contention for Dortmund with the draw opening in front of him. The ordering updates match by match on the European Championship race table, and the mechanics of the cut are set out in our guide to how the Dortmund field is decided.
Swiss Darts Trophy second round: Saturday’s line-up
All 16 seeds enter here, and the draw has been kind to the bottom of the seeding list in a way that may not survive the afternoon. Cross, who hit the highest average of the Friday, meets 14th seed Luke Woodhouse— a man who was not seeded at all until Thursday’s withdrawals lifted him into the bracket. Martin Schindler, the 2024 champion and another beneficiary of that reshuffle, gets Bissell; Ratajski gets Bellmont and a hostile hall.
| Seed | First-round winner | Session |
|---|---|---|
| (16) Krzysztof Ratajski | Stefan Bellmont | Afternoon |
| (11) Wessel Nijman | Karel Sedlacek | Afternoon |
| (14) Luke Woodhouse | Rob Cross | Afternoon |
| (15) Martin Schindler | Tom Bissell | Afternoon |
| (9) Ryan Searle | Cristo Reyes | Afternoon |
| (12) Ross Smith | William O’Connor | Afternoon |
| (10) Chris Dobey | Bradley Brooks | Afternoon |
| (13) Jermaine Wattimena | Michael Smith | Afternoon |
| (6) Josh Rock | Dave Chisnall | Evening |
| (7) Stephen Bunting | Jeffrey de Graaf | Evening |
| (4) James Wade | Dirk van Duijvenbode | Evening |
| (3) Jonny Clayton | Maik Kuivenhoven | Evening |
| (5) Michael van Gerwen | Mensur Suljovic | Evening |
| (1) Luke Humphries | Kevin Doets | Evening |
| (2) Gian van Veen | Niko Springer | Evening |
| (8) Danny Noppert | Damon Heta | Evening |
Top seed Luke Humphries opens against Kevin Doets in the evening, and Jonny Clayton — one of the names still missing from the Grand Slam field, for whom a tour title is the quickest way in — faces Kuivenhoven. The third round, quarter-finals, semi-finals and final are all on Sunday, and the rest of the autumn sits on the 2026 calendar. Prize money, the format and the six routes into the 48-player field are covered in our Swiss Darts Trophy preview.