Hello. Everyone’s looking for an angle these days, a slightly different take on things that makes them seem more interesting than the average keyboard expert. But sometimes you can’t ignore the obvious. Take tonight’s world darts championship final at Alexandra Palace between Michael van Gerwen and Peter Wright. You just can’t get past the fact that it’s a serial winner against a serial runner-up; that, when these two meet in a final, it invariably ends with Wright saying “I’ll get him next time” during a rueful post-match interview.
Wright is a magnificent player, one of the best never to win a world title, but his record in major finals is desperate. He has lost 12 out of 13, nine of them to van Gerwen, and it is cruelly symbolic that the only time he did win a major – the 2017 UK Open – was when van Gerwen was absent through injury.
The most painful defeat was in the Premier League final of 2017, when Wright blew a 7-2 lead and missed six match darts before losing 11-10. The biggest was the world championship final five years ago, when van Gerwen won 7-4.
Wright turns 50 in March, a birthday that all darts players dread, and may never have a better chance of laying the ghost. He has stopped playing silly buggers with his darts, instead sticking to the same pair, and has been the best player at a slightly underwhelming world championships. After surviving a huge scare in the first round against Noel Malicdem, he played with impressive authority to beat Seigo Asada, Jeffrey de Zwaan, Luke Humphries and Gerwyn Price.
Van Gerwen, by contrast, has been a fair way from his coruscating best. His victories over Jelle Klaasen, Ricky Evans, Stephen Bunting, Darius Labanauskas and Nathan Aspinall were laboured, as if it was all a bit too easy. Van Gerwen is still the best player in the world by a distance, but he’s nowhere near as unbeatable during his imperial phase in 2015-16.
Wright will probably outscore van Gerwen, but that alone will not be enough. Van Gerwen has become a master of doing, to use his favourite phrase, “the right things at the right moments”. The timing of his breaks and big checkouts, even when he is not playing well, is often devastating.
I think Wright might do it tonight, but he has got to start well. If not, the tungsten flashbacks could ruin him.
The first dart will be thrown around 7.15pm local time.
