In every sport there are professionals who are gifted with great talent and those who find everything a little more difficult, but who train all the harder. Which category does Gabriel Clemens belong to? Well, Clemens played in the Darts Bundesliga for years without ever having trained seriously. “The German Giant” then let the hard work follow from summer 2017 onwards.
Half a year after Clemens started training, he won his tour card at the Qualifying School of the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC). With this eligibility to play he was allowed to play all tournaments of the Pro Tour. The trained locksmith agreed with his employer to only work three days a week in order to have more time for darts.
The training paid off. Clemens has long been a full-time professional, number 31 in the world, has four finals and various round of 16 appearances in major tournaments. He shows good performances offside and now also on stage, is one of the most consistent players on the tour.
When the giant gets loud
Most experts agree that it is only a matter of time before Clemens is in the top 16 in the world. He doesn’t care much about the timing of his breakthrough. “I go step by step,” he tells SPIEGEL. »My development over the past three years has been good and healthy. If it ever does, it’s good. If not, then I’ll just have to work more «.
A typical Clemens answer that radiates calm in every situation. He saw for himself that he was perhaps too calm on the board for a long time. Now you can see him cheering after successful actions, clenching his fist. Clemens towers over most of his opponents and is built to be strong. When the “German Giant” gets loud, it can be impressive.
Clemens is only missing the one big success. Often it is a tournament or just a single game that permanently raises a player to a new level in this sport, which is mainly decided in the mind. That turns a player who knows he can play well into one who knows he will play well.
For the number one in the world, Michael van Gerwen, this one game was the round of 16 at the World Matchplay 2012, when he played the perfect game against Steve Beaton, bringing 501 to zero with nine arrows. Van Gerwen, who was already considered the greatest talent at the time, won the game with a point average of almost 105. From then on, things went uphill for him, he won his first major in the same year and was in the World Cup final, since 2013 he has dominated the Trip.
In November, Clemens’s moment seemed to have come. At the 20th event in the Players Championship series, the 37-year-old played an average of over 105 points in four consecutive games, two of which were more than 112. No other player has managed that in one day. In the quarter-finals he could not confirm this performance and clearly lost.
Clemens calmly takes the fact that he has replaced Max Hopp as the German number one – and is therefore even more in focus. “It has only changed for me that I am now always asked about it by the media,” says Clemens. “It’s more important that I’m in the top 32. It doesn’t matter who is number one and who is number two «.
Clemens’ rise as an opportunity for Hopp
For Germany’s former flagship darter Hopp, it could even be an advantage not to be number one anymore.
The “Maximiser” qualified for the first time in 2012 at the age of 16 for the world championship and triggered a darts boom two years later with his first round win against Mervyn King in Germany. The head of the PDC, Barry Hearn, identified Germany as the most important market outside of Great Britain early on. “I need a top player, a Boris Becker with arrows. I have high hopes for Max Hopp, ”Hearn said at the time.
A lot of pressure for an 18-year-old at the time – probably too much. Although Hopp is the only German player who could win a ranking tournament of the PDC, he could never fulfill the very high hopes. In between, after the missed 2018 World Cup, it looked as if Hopp might lose his tour card. In the following season he won two tournaments, and was number 32 in the world for the first time as a seeded player at the 2019 World Cup. The breakthrough seemed to have been achieved, the promise that was never his own was kept. Two years later, Hopp is no longer seeded, has not won another tournament and only qualified for London at all due to an increase in performance towards the end of the year.
In the first round of this World Cup, Hopp defeated Australian Gordon Mathers smoothly, in round two he lost 1: 3 against the world-class playing King.
As a seeded player, Gabriel Clemens only intervenes in round two. In the evening (from around 10 p.m. / Sport1) he meets his 23-year-old compatriot Nico Kurz, who is considered a great hope for the next generation. A German will definitely still be there in the third round.
