NOS Sport•
Gian van Veen has started the Darts World Cup in London with enthusiasm. The first Dutch top player to play at Alexandra Palace won 3-1 in a high-quality match against Spaniard Cristo Reyes.
Van Veen (23) is confident after a strong autumn, in which he became European champion and won the youth World Cup. However, Van Veen has never won a match in two participations at the world championship for seniors.
His Spanish opponent made it anything but easy for him on Friday evening. With three 180 scores, Reyes, a six-time World Cup participant and once eighth-finalist, had better averages in the first set, but Van Veen remained calm and took a set lead 3-1.
The European champion increased his scores to an average of 107 per three arrows and easily took the second set. Reyes pulled himself up to Van Veen’s level and made it exciting for a while, but in the fourth set Van Veen finished it off by missing only one arrow on a double.
Swedish stunt
Earlier in the evening, the Swede Andreas Harrysson caused the first big surprise of the tournament by winning 3-2 against Ross Smith, number twelve in the PDC world rankings.
Harryson, a fifty-year-old debutant at the PDC World Cup, escaped in the fourth set because Smith missed six match darts. In the fifth set the Swede also seemed to collapse under the pressure, but on his fifth chance to decide the match he threw out.
The Englishman Ricky Evans, dressed as every year in a colorful Christmas outfit, defeated Man-Lok Leung from Hong Kong in his first match: 3-0. Leung knocked out Van Veen in the first round last year and put a lot of pressure on Evans, but ‘Rapid Ricky‘ stood up twice in a decisive fifth leg.
