A 180 degree turn was inevitable. And the darts professional Luke Humphries knows the number 180 better than anyone else. He was 1:3 behind in the game against his German opponent Ricardo Pietreczko, and the score was 2:2 in set number five. Humphries knew: He had to score now, otherwise he would lose this game. The three-way 180 combination was needed – and basically everything else he was aiming for.
It was a tricky situation for probably the best darts player in the world at the moment. So not just the sporting situation, but also the environment: it was actually a home game for Humphries against Nuremberg. But the fans at London’s Alexandra Palace weren’t really on the 28-year-old Englishman’s side, on the contrary. It must have felt like an away game for Humphries at the Ally Pally on Thursday night because the audience whistled and booed him for nearly the entire game. This resulted in the greatest possible moment of pressure for Humphries. And just now, when it became inevitable, he showed why he is the favorite in this World Cup, even in an away game.
In the end, Humphries won 4:3 against the 29-year-old Pietreczko from Nuremberg and made it clear that he had earned his nickname “Cool Hand Luke” since Thursday evening at the latest. After he won this sporting drama, the Brit’s coolness was gone. Immediately after the match, he jumped provocatively towards a corner of the audience with his fist clenched. “There were about three people who whistled and booed at every single throw, that’s just ridiculous. In the end they got the reaction they deserved,” he said after reaching the round of 16: “I had 99 percent of the audience against it me. That was honestly the hardest game I’ve ever played.”
“I apologized for all the catcalling in the audience.”
His defeated opponent Ricardo Pietreczko, however, reacted at the moment of defeat with a grand gesture and clear words. He hugged Humphries for almost a minute – and later gave Sport1 insights into his emotional world. “I apologized for all the catcalling in the audience,” said “Pikachu,” as his fans call him: “That’s just not okay, no matter who you support.”
His colleague, the “German Giant” Gabriel Clemens, was the first German to advance to the World Cup semi-finals a year ago. Now, for the first time, five Germans qualified for the field of 96 participants at a Darts World Cup before four of them advanced to round three, which is also a new, well, top value in German darts. With the Netherlands, Germany had the second most representatives in the round of 16 after England (twelve). However, the knockout games of the best 32 of this World Cup showed that the British are still an arrow’s length ahead of the Germans in darts. German Giants? Then more like pseudo giants.
Both Martin Schindler from Brandenburg, who had to admit defeat 3:4 after a thriller to Scott Williams, as well as Clemens from Saarwellingen (1:4 against Dave Chisnall) and Florian Hempel from Cologne (0:4 against Stephen Bunting) had problems at times during the tournament showed extremely strong performances. In the future, Pietreczko, like Clemens and Schindler, will be in the top 40 of the world rankings – also a national record. But there is obviously still something missing from the world top level that Clemens reached a year ago – even if, as in the case of Pietreczko and Schindler, it was just a single leg at the decisive moment.
One can say that it was probably not the spectators’ fault that all four German participants had New Year’s Eve off. Darts is booming in Germany, as the TV ratings show, for example. A peak of 1.78 million viewers watched the game on Thursday evening on Sport1. Added to this is the quota in the “Ally Pally”, a quarter of the 80,000 World Cup tickets sold went to Germany. Luke Humphries didn’t get a thumbs up on stage – just a 180 and a clenched fist in your face. Take that, you German giants.