Wednesday’s second round results in full
Second-round matches lengthen to the best of five sets, which in theory gives the beaten man room to climb back. Only Wessel Nijman used it, and he still went out.
| Winner | Sets | Loser | Legs by set | Averages |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ryan Joyce | 3-0 | Danny Noppert | 3-1, 3-1, 3-1 | 86.04 – 85.99 |
| Jonny Clayton | 3-1 | Wessel Nijman | 3-0, 2-3, 3-1, 3-1 | 93.08 – 88.31 |
| Gerwyn Price | 3-0 | Ross Smith | 3-2, 3-1, 3-1 | 90.81 – 91.11 |
| Nathan Aspinall | 3-0 | Luke Woodhouse | 3-0, 3-1, 3-2 | 96.27 – 86.43 |
Four matches, thirteen sets, and the beaten four took fifteen legs between them. Ryan Joyce won all three of his sets by the identical score of 3-1.
Ross Smith out-averaged Price and lost 3-0
The scoreboard and the stat sheet told opposite stories in two of the four ties. Ross Smith averaged 91.11 against Price’s 90.81 and won four legs out of thirteen. Danny Noppert finished 0.05 of a point behind Joyce and lost without taking a set.
Smith’s bar is the third longest on the board and he went home. Source: match averages via DartsNews, dartn.de and Sky Sports.
That is the double-start format doing what it does. A leg here cannot begin until a player hits a double, so a man scoring heavily in the middle of the leg can be nowhere near winning it. The average counts every dart thrown at a bed he could not open with, which is why the double-in rules make this the one week of the year when the stat sheet is close to useless. The first round had already made the point from the other direction: Luke Humphries averaged 80.41 on Tuesday and won 2-0.
Price’s win carried a second meaning. On 20 September, in Amsterdam, Smith beat him 11-5 in the World Series of Darts Finals, taking six legs in a row from 5-5 on a 103.89 average. Eleven days later Price took the rematch in straight sets. “It wasn’t a brilliant game, but a win’s a win and I’m still in the tournament,” was his summary, which for a man whose seven major titles include this one is about right.
Clayton took the first set with 112, 116 and 125
Jonny Claytonopened against Nijman with three consecutive three-figure finishes — 112, then 116, then 125 taken out on the bullseye to win the set 3-0. It is hard to think of a worse way to start a televised match than watching that from the other side of the oche.
Nijman recovered enough to take the second set 3-2 and is still waiting for the television breakthrough his floor form says is coming. Clayton won the last two sets 3-1 apiece and averaged 93.08 to Nijman’s 88.31. He has now reached the quarter-finals here in each of the last three years, with a semi-final in 2025 and a quarter-final in 2024 that ended against the defending champion.
Aspinall ended the run that ended Littler
Luke Woodhouse arrived in the last 16 as the story of the week, having knocked out the defending champion on Monday. Nathan Aspinalltook the first set 3-0, hit eight 180s, averaged 96.27 — the best figure of the night by more than three points — and closed it out with a 106 finish on double 16 after Woodhouse had pushed the third set to a deciding leg.
Woodhouse was not disgraced. He averaged 86.43 and found a 135 checkout in the second set. He simply ran into the one man on Wednesday who was scoring like it was an ordinary tournament.
The last eight so far: four men who have all been here before
Each of Wednesday’s winners banked a quarter-final place worth £35,000; the four who lost collect £20,000 apiece. The more striking thing about the four survivors is their history in this building and its predecessors.
| Player | Beat | Best finish here | Quarter-final |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gerwyn Price | Ross Smith 3-0 | Champion 2020, runner-up 2021 | v Jonny Clayton |
| Jonny Clayton | Wessel Nijman 3-1 | Champion 2021 | v Gerwyn Price |
| Nathan Aspinall | Luke Woodhouse 3-0 | Runner-up 2022 | v Ryan Joyce |
| Ryan Joyce | Danny Noppert 3-0 | Semi-final 2024 | v Nathan Aspinall |
Two former champions, a beaten finalist and a semi-finalist. In a tournament that spent Monday and Tuesday removing Luke Littler, Michael van Gerwen, Josh Rock and Chris Dobey, the top half has produced four quarter-finalists with no novices among them.
Price and Clayton have the better story. They met in the 2021 final here, an all-Welsh showpiece that Clayton won 5-1 to end Price’s year as champion. They also met eleven days ago in the World Series of Darts Finals semi-final in Amsterdam, where Price averaged over 104 and won. Friday is the next instalment.
Aspinall against Joyce is a rematch too, and a more painful one for Aspinall. In the second round of the 2024 World Grand Prix, Joyce beat him 3-2 in a deciding leg of the fifth set and went on to reach his first semi-final at this tournament. Aspinall has gone further in this tournament than Joyce ever has — he lost the 2022 final to Michael van Gerwen — but the last time the two of them met in Leicester, Joyce put him out.
Thursday fills the other half
The bottom half plays its second round on Thursday 1 October from 19:00 BST: Luke Humphries against Jermaine Wattimena, Niels Zonneveld against Gary Anderson, Gian van Veen against Ryan Searle and James Wade against Stephen Bunting. All eight of those players came through Tuesday’s first-round session, and six of the eight are seeded.
The quarter-finals follow on Friday 2 October, the semi-finals on Saturday and the final on Sunday 4 October, with £150,000 waiting for the winner out of a £750,000 fund — the full ladder is in our schedule and prize money breakdown, and the rest of the season is on the darts calendar.
Humphries is the highest seed left and is also the man who averaged 80.41 in the first round. On the evidence of Wednesday, that may not tell anyone very much.