Littler humiliates Wattimena at Grand Slam with record defeat, Van Veen also exits

NOS Sport•yesterday, 9:15 PM

Darts players Jermaine Wattimena and Gian van Veen have failed to reach the last four of the Grand Slam, one of the last major tournaments before the world championship starts.

Wattimena had no chance against Luke Littler in the quarter-finals and lost 16-2. Later in the evening, Gian van Veen had to admit his superiority to Gary Anderson with a score of 16-14. There are no longer any Dutch players active in the tournament.

Wattimena and Littler have faced each other twice before and both times the Englishman won convincingly. Wattimena also had little say in Wolverhampton. In fact, never before has a quarter-final over sixteen legs been lost by such a large margin.

Wattimena started the match well, but was unable to match the scoring ability of his opponent. Littler missed the last arrow for a nine-darter in the second leg and went into the first break with a 4-1 lead.

Even after the restart, Wattimena had little say. The number 37 in the world rankings had to watch passively as Littler, who is nineteen places higher, threw high scores of 167 and 164 via the bullseye.

Littler simply walked away from Wattimena and took the last eleven legs in a row. He decided the game by throwing a score of 110 with his first match arrow.

More exciting was the second quarter-final of the evening, in which 22-year-old Van Veen competed against darts veteran Anderson. After an even match, Van Veen narrowly lost 16-14 to the 53-year-old Scot.

Van Veen immediately had to deal with a break in the first leg, but broke back twice before the first break. As a result, he went into the break with a 3-2 lead.

Van Veen had to pass after falling behind 6-5. At 9-5, Anderson had the opportunity to make a new break and thus lead definitively, but Van Veen was lucky that his opponent missed the double-4.

Van Veen thus remained in the party. On several occasions he narrowly neutralized Anderson’s break chances by hitting the right double at the last moment.

But at the start of the final phase it became clear that Van Veen himself had to make a break to maintain a view of winning. He couldn’t do that. From 10-8 onwards, every leg went with the darts. Anderson used his first match arrow and finished the match via the double-12.