Darts

This past weekend was last chance saloon, or so I thought! I needed to get £75 from the last UK Open Regional, and that meant winning 2 games. First I played Graeme Stoddart, who was in the top 16 in the world for quite a while a few years ago. I started off very poorly. I fould myself 3-0 before I had even started. A couple of decent scores to start the 4th leg got me going, and I won the next 3 legs very comfortably. The final leg against the darts was much the same, and I was on a double with Stoddart well behind. However 15 darts later I was still on a double, and Stoddart was down with me. Plenty more misses for both of us, before I finally hit Double 1 to win the match. 2nd Round I faced Dave Askew, who has a couple of World Championship Semi Final appearances on his record. Again I lost the bull, but managed to steal the 1st leg. I won the 2nd comfortably, but then stuttered a bit once again. Askew took 3 legs on the bounce to go 3-2 up, before I levelled at 3-3. Askew held in the 7th leg, and in the 8th he took 141 out to win the match 5-3. Disapointing again, but with every tournament my confidence is growing, and I'm proving that I can live with the pro's, even if I'm not quite doing enough to beat them yet.

So that was that for this year I thought, but then this morning I saw they have adjusted the rules slightly for qualification. The tournaments before the new year had less prize money on offer, so it was a bit unfair that those who achieved the same results after the prize money had gone up would be ranked higher than those before. Therefore those just outside the top 128 (all on £50 are joint 133rd) are also invited to compete in the UK Open in June.

This will be my 2nd appearance at the Reebok Stadium, and hopefully I play much better than my 1st Round exit 2 years ago. The draw is done in mid May, so I'll find out then whether I have a toughy against a top star on the main TV stage, or a winnable game on the outside boards.