World Darts Championship: Plaisier Advances, Veenstra Upset

Wesley Plaisier has reached the second round of the Darts World Cup for the second year in a row. The number 94 in the PDC rankings won 3-1 in sets against German Lukas Wenig (64th in the ranking).

Richard Veenstra suffered a surprising defeat. He lost to Indian Nitin Kumar. The 44-year-old Veenstra threw five finishes above 100, but still came out short against the four-year-younger Indian.

In the first set there was no problem for Plaisier, who won three legs in a row and went into the first break with confidence. The second set was a big step back, because Wenig was able to equalize thanks to a lot of missed doubles.

Plaisier’s engine also faltered in the third set, who had too many turns without triples. An important rebreak at 2-1 in legs kept him upright, after which he convincingly won the decisive leg.

Plaisier continued to alternate good and bad legs, but after three consecutive breaks in the fourth set, the man from Hendrik-Ido-Ambacht took the victory.

After four legs, Veenstra (number 47 in the PDC rankings) was probably as surprised as the 3,000 fans in the hall. Kumar is not ranked in the world and should have qualified through the Indian qualifiers, but at that time he had a strong average of 95 and had won the first set 3-1.

In the second set, Veenstra seemed to put things in order when he quickly won three legs in a row and leveled the score.

However, Kumar was not done yet and also won the third set, despite a 144 finish from Veenstra. There were big finishes, but the easy checkouts did not work for Veenstra, who reached the third round two years ago. The fourth set went to the Dutchman again 3-0, with another finish of 126.

In the fifth and deciding set, Kumar took a 2-0 lead. Veenstra came back to 2-1, but Kumar won in the next leg, his first ever at a World Cup.

“I throw great finishes, but I just give away my own sets. I don’t know what it is,” Veenstra said after the match.

‘Flyers’ noticed that the fans were behind Kumar. “Of course I prefer that the audience is on my side. I tried to keep my focus and that worked, but it is not nice.”

World number four Stephen Bunting took a very convincing 2-0 lead against Sebastian Bialecki (Poland). After the second break, it was suddenly all over for last year’s semi-finalist. Bialecki came back to 2-2 while the famous World Cup wasp (every year one or more wasps appear on the podium at Alexandra Palace) was on his shirt.

Bunting woke up in time and in extra time he dealt with Bialecki, who only noticed the wasp after about ten minutes and removed it from his shirt.

Funnily enough, earlier this week Ross Smith also threw good scores with a wasp on his shirt. After removing the animal, his level dropped and he was the first seeded player to get out.

Former finalist Dimitri van den Bergh had a difficult 2025, with a break due to mental problems. The Belgian lost 3-0 in his match against Darren Beveridge.