World Grand Prix Semi-Finals: Aspinall Averages 105.15

Friday’s quarter-final results in full

The quarter-finals of the 2026 BOYLE Sports World Grand Prix were played at the Mattioli Arena from 19:00 BST on Friday 2 October, over the best of five sets. Thirty-nine legs went to the four winners and eighteen to the four losers.

Three of the winners took the minimum nine legs needed to get out of a best-of-five-sets tie. Price needed twelve, and he had to come from two sets down to get them.

Why Aspinall’s 105.15 is the biggest number of the week

Aspinall beat Ryan Joyce 3-0 on a 105.15 average. That is the fourth-highest three-dart average in the history of the World Grand Prix, and the context is what makes it unusual: the three figures above it were all thrown in the first round.

The first round here is the best of three sets. Ton-plus averages cluster there because the match can be over in six legs, before anything goes wrong. Aspinall’s came in a quarter-final, over nine legs, and no one had previously averaged above 103.09 at this tournament in any match beyond the first round — Michael van Gerwenset that mark in a quarter-final, with Phil Taylor’s 103.02 in a semi-final the next best. Aspinall beat it by more than two points.

Aspinall won the opening set in 42 darts and finished 110 and 112 in the second, which he took on a 109.78 average. Joyce landed 153 to hold a leg and went out having been beaten 9-4 on legs despite forcing two of the three sets to a decider. “I felt so relaxed and focused tonight,” Aspinall said afterwards. “The amount of 152s I hit in those first two sets was ridiculous.”

That last line is the whole explanation. In a double-start format, 152 — double 20 followed by two treble 20s — is the perfect opening three darts, and a man hitting it repeatedly is not leaving his opponent a turn to work with.

Price survived three Clayton match darts

The all-Welsh tie was the only quarter-final that lasted. Jonny Clayton took the first set in a deciding leg and the second without reply, and from two sets down Price won the third and fourth to level, the third on the back of an eleven-dart break and a twelve-dart hold.

Clayton then led the deciding set 2-0 in legs. He missed a match dart to win it there, and two more in the final leg. Price took all three of the last legs and the match, and the two former champions in the same quarter of the draw became one.

Price was the 2020 champion and the 2021 runner-up, beaten in that final by Clayton. They had met more recently than that too: Price won their World Series of Darts Finals semi-final on 20 September, so Friday was the second time in a fortnight that he had ended Clayton’s week.

Wade won the first eight legs

James Wade against Gian van Veenwas the shortest match of the night and the most lopsided quarter-final of the week. Wade won the first eight legs of the match without van Veen getting a single dart at a double, and the Dutchman’s only leg of the entire tie came in the third set.

Van Veen arrived in Leicester as the reigning European Champion and a 2026 World Championship runner-up, and left having won one leg in a quarter-final. Wade, who turned 43 in April, is into his first semi-final at this tournament since 2014, which is also the last year he reached its final. He won the title in 2007 and 2010.

Wade had already beaten Stephen Bunting on Thursday despite being out-averaged by three points, which is the second time this week the scoreboard and the stat sheet have disagreed about him. Friday they agreed.

Humphries is into a fourth straight semi-final

Luke Humphries beat Niels Zonneveld 3-1, 3-2, 3-1 to end the best week of the Dutchman’s career. Zonneveld had beaten seventh seed Josh Rock on his tournament debut and then two-time world champion Gary Anderson, and on Friday he had a dart at a double to take a set off Humphries without landing one.

Humphries has now reached the semi-finals here in each of the last four years — champion in 2023, beaten in the 2024 and 2025 finals — and has not dropped a set in Leicester this week. Eight played, eight won, across a 2-0 first-round win over Dave Chisnall and 3-0 wins over Jermaine Wattimena and Zonneveld. He is the only man left who can say that, and he had been the week’s most awkward case: he opened the tournament on an 80.41 average with 26 per cent on his closing doubles.

Who is in the World Grand Prix semi-finals?

Every one of the four has played in a World Grand Prix final, nine between them, and four of those nine were won: Wade in 2007 and 2010, Price in 2020, Humphries in 2023. That leaves Aspinall as the one man in the last four still looking for this title — and the one who has stood at exactly this point before, against exactly this opponent. He beat Price 4-2 in the 2022 semi-final, then lost the final to van Gerwen.

Aspinall has two televised major ranking titles, the 2019 UK Open and the 2023 World Matchplay, where he beat Clayton 18-6. A third would complete an unlikely week for the sixteenth seed, who is the only man out of the bottom half of the seeding list still in the building after top seed Luke Littler went out on Monday night.

When are the World Grand Prix semi-finals and final?

Both semi-finals are on Saturday 3 October from 20:00 BST at the Mattioli Arena, live on Sky Sports and PDCTV, over the best of nine sets — first to five, two sets longer than anything either half of the draw has played so far. Aspinall against Price is the first match; Humphries against Wade follows. The final is on Sunday 4 October, also from 20:00, over the best of eleven.

The beaten semi-finalists collect £50,000 each against the £35,000 already banked for reaching Friday. The runner-up takes £80,000 and the champion £150,000 from a fund of £750,000; the full prize ladder and schedule has every cheque, and the rest of the season sits on the darts calendar.

Longer sets should favour the two highest seeds left, and on Friday’s evidence they favour Aspinall most of all. But the last four days have not rewarded that kind of reasoning: the man who averaged 96.29 in the second round went home, the man who averaged 80.41 in the first has not lost a set since, and a tournament debutant beat a two-time world champion on 85.16.