Nine darts, first match, first night
Nine-darters are not supposed to arrive in the opening game of a major. Woodhouse took out 501 in three visits, in the very first match of the week in Dortmund. Reports differ on which leg it landed in, so we have left that detail out rather than guess at it.
It was the second time in under four weeks that Woodhouse has made himself the story. The 37-year-old knocked defending champion Luke Littler out of the World Grand Prix on the opening night in Leicester on 28 September, winning 2-1 in a match where neither man averaged 83. This was the opposite kind of performance: 99.11 against a seed who could not get going, and a perfect leg on top.
How many nine-darters have been hit at the European Championship?
Five. The first four all came from well-known names, and three of them arrived in semi-finals — which makes Woodhouse’s, in a best-of-11 first-round tie, the odd one out alongside Jose de Sousa’s in 2020.
| Year | Player | Round | Opponent |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | Adrian Lewis | Semi-final | Raymond van Barneveld |
| 2014 | Michael van Gerwen | Semi-final | Raymond van Barneveld |
| 2017 | Kyle Anderson | Semi-final | Michael van Gerwen |
| 2020 | Jose de Sousa | First round | Jeffrey de Zwaan |
| 2026 | Luke Woodhouse | First round | Dirk van Duijvenbode |
Six years is a long gap. If you want the mechanics — the standard routes, the records, and why the maths makes it so rare — we have a full guide to the nine-dart finish.
European Championship first-round results
Round one in Dortmund is a sprint: best of 11 legs, with eight ties on Thursday and eight more on Friday. Five of Thursday’s eight were complete when this went up.
| Winner | Loser | Legs | Avg W | Avg L |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Luke Woodhouse (9) | Dirk van Duijvenbode (24) | 6-3 | 99.11 | 84.82 |
| Stephen Bunting (28) | Danny Noppert (5) | 6-5 | 89.81 | 90.92 |
| Cameron Menzies (29) | Niels Zonneveld (4) | 6-3 | 93.75 | 90.00 |
| Gerwyn Price (13) | Rob Cross (20) | 6-2 | 99.26 | 90.90 |
| Damon Heta (17) | James Wade (16) | 6-5 | 91.49 | 96.48 |
| Kim Huybrechts v Ryan Searle (21) | Still in play | |||
| Gian van Veen (8) v Andrew Gilding (25) | Still in play | |||
| Ross Smith (1) v Karel Sedlacek (32) | Still in play | |||
Bunting and Menzies take out the top-five seeds
Three of the five completed ties went the way of the lower seed, and two of them removed players from the top five of the European Tour Order of Merit. Stephen Bunting, seeded 28th, beat fifth seed Danny Noppert 6-5 in a last-leg decider. Cameron Menzies, seeded 29th, beat fourth seed Niels Zonneveld 6-3 — four days after Zonneveld had won the Dutch Darts Championship for his first PDC ranking title.
Both of those winners were out-averaged by the man they beat. Bunting went through on 89.81 to Noppert’s 90.92, and Damon Heta edged James Wade6-5 while averaging 91.49 against Wade’s 96.48. Over eleven legs that is the format doing exactly what the seeds fear it will.
The exception was Gerwyn Price, who was the heaviest scorer of the night: 99.26 in a 6-2 win over Rob Cross, and the only one of the five winners to concede fewer than three legs.
Bars scaled from a baseline of 80 to separate the field. Source: DartsNews and DartsNieuws match data for the five completed ties.
Why Kim Huybrechts replaced Luke Humphries
Luke Humphries is not in Dortmund. The world No.2 withdrew after being diagnosed with gastroenteritis, and under PDC rules his place went to the next man on the European Tour Order of Merit rather than leaving a bye. That is Kim Huybrechts, who inherited the first-round tie with Ryan Searlein Thursday’s late session.
It is a bitter withdrawal for Humphries, who lost last year’s final 11-10 to Gian van Veen and was seeded 12th this time. Our draw analysis, published before the withdrawal, still has the full bracket and the seeding logic that left Luke Littler down at 11th.
Who does Woodhouse play in the second round?
Van Veen or Andrew Gilding, on Saturday 24 October — and over the best of 19 legs rather than 11, which gives the stronger scorer far more room to recover from a bad start. Van Veen arrived in Dortmund as defending champion and in the form that carried him to a hat-trick of semi-finals at the end of the European Tour season.
Friday’s eight first-round ties include Littler against William O’Connor and an all-Dutch tie between Kevin Doets and Michael van Gerwen. The tournament format runs to a best-of-21 final on Sunday, and the rest of the season is on the 2026 calendar.