Michael van Gerwen edges Callan Rydz in epic at PDC world championship
They call 1 January the greatest day in the darting calendar. Come back in another 364 days to see if there’s been a better match than this. Michael van Gerwen is a world championship semi-finalist again, beating Callan Rydz 5-3, and even if the bare facts of the transaction feel unremarkable enough, then rarely, if ever, will he have been pushed, challenged, interrogated than he was by the likeable Geordie here.
Rydz, perhaps the outstanding performer in this tournament to this point, was magnificent, outdoing the great Van Gerwen on almost every conceivable metric. He won 18 legs to 17. He averaged 104 to Van Gerwen’s 103. He edged checkouts 46% to 45%. He hit 17 180s to Van Gerwen’s 14, at a rate of almost one every other leg. He showed bottle beyond belief, levelling at 1-1, again at 2-2, then pulling one back to trail 4-3 when everyone assumed Van Gerwen would cruise to victory.
Related:
PDC World Darts Championship quarter-finals: Van Gerwen holds off Rydz; Dobey dumps out Price – live
And the talent was always there. Anyone who saw Rydz in his 2021 breakout season will know how hot his hot streaks can run. But somehow he was never quite able to take the next step. They called him soft, surly, lacking in backbone. Nobody will ever be able to say that about him again.
Rydz played far, far better than
Scott Williams did in bundling Van Gerwen out
at the same stage 12 months ago. That Van Gerwen was thus able to match him, and then defeat him, was evidence the Dutchman’s title challenge is no illusion. This was the first time he had been assigned an afternoon slot on this stage since late 2013, a measure of how his star has waned.But this was some response: a lesson in resilience, in sensing the big moments and seizing them, and in the tapered peaks of set play this is the greatest talent of all. Rydz had darts to win the first 12 legs of the match. Somehow, Van Gerwen emerged from the first three sets 2-1 up. An electrifying fifth set proved the pivotal moment, Van Gerwen claiming it with a piercing double one and an explosion of noise after Rydz had missed double top for a 3-2 lead.
Van Gerwen broke and won the sixth set for 4-2, seemingly putting this match to sleep. But Rydz did not waver. Another 180 set up a checkout of 70 for a crucial break in the seventh set. Then, with the darts, he produced a 12-dart leg with 180-42-180-99, finishing with two in double top. Van Gerwen had begun the leg 97-180-140, and didn’t throw another dart.
The eighth set also went to a decider, and when Rydz left himself 96 after nine darts we were seemingly going all the way. But Van Gerwen found his top gear, found seven trebles out of nine, and when Rydz missed two darts at double 18 for the set, he converted with a 12-dart leg of his own for the match.
Thursday’s semi-final throws Van Gerwen up against Chris Dobey, who came through his own trial of tremolos against Gerwyn Price in the first quarter-final. Again Price surged into an imperious two-set lead; again he collapsed on the outer ring to let his opponent back in; this time, despite a spirited reprieve at 4-2 when Dobey missed five darts for the match, his game did not recover.
For Dobey, it was an exorcism of sorts, a year to the day
after he threw away a 4-0 lead to lose 5-4 against Rob Cross
at the same stage. He is a tougher, wiser player these days, but will still need to find more levels against the irresistible van Gerwen, who thus far has answered every question posed of him. As the mighty Dutchman put it in his post-match interview: “What do you want to know? I’m still here.”