Top favorite at the World Darts Championship felt "dead and buried"
Trouble with the spectators, problems with the German shooting star and actually no sign of a comeback. Top favorite Luke Humphries jumps off the scaffold of sporting "death" at the World Darts Championship after all.
Luke Humphries, the top favorite for the title at the World Darts Championship, cheered at the end of a highly dramatic match in a way that only Gerwyn Price usually does. Provocatively in the direction of the spectators. But after Price had sensationally failed against outsider Brendan Dolan a good hour and a half earlier, Humphries bounced across the stage in London's Alexandra Palace like a bouncy ball that evening.
Everything was set for the German darts sensation. Ricardo Pietreczko, the shooting star of the year, didn't play particularly well, but still much better than the comparatively weak Humphries. After the Englishman had snatched the first set, the world number three didn't do much more. Instead, "Pikachu" played maturely and deliberately, without much emotion, just with a Becker fist after every leg win. And there were plenty of them. Three sets in a row went to the 29-year-old German.
Humphries had long since lost not only his usual level of play, but also his composure at times. The winner of the World Grand Prix, Grand Slam and Players Championship stomped off the stage in a huff after falling 3:1 behind at the last break.
Humphries must have been primarily annoyed by his performance, but some of the 3,000 spectators in the "Ally Pally" also played their part. Unlike the day before, when two Germans - Martin Schindler and Gabriel Clemens - had already been eliminated against English players, German fans were initially clearly superior acoustically on this evening.
"Home game in England" and occasional whistles
Sometimes an atmospheric "Home game in England" spilled over the beer benches and upper tier, sometimes the uncreative "Without Germany there would be nothing going on here". Occasionally, however, boos and whistles, which are considered a bad habit in darts, were mixed into the heated England versus Germany atmosphere in the hall. A small section of the crowd mostly whistled when Humphries threw a double.
But when the World Championship top favorite started his comeback in the fifth set, the English darts fans woke up from their hibernation and supported their protégé just as loudly as the Germans had done for Pietreczko.
After the match, the Englishman spoke of "99 percent" who were against him. "That was really tough. They disrupted almost every one of my shots. At times I thought I was in Germany," Humphries lamented.
Although the 99 percent figure was an exaggeration, "Cool Hand Luke" certainly had a tough time. All the more reason to appreciate his hard-working victory after trailing 1:3 at one stage. Pietreczko was again in the lead in the fifth set, but missed an opportunity to make it 2:0 in the legs. Humphries then fought his way back into the set and then into the match with a commanding decider. The sixth and seventh legs finally went clearly to the World Championship top favorite with 3:1 and 3:0.
"That was one of the most difficult matches of my career. I felt dead and buried. I didn't even have any signs of a comeback," admitted Humphries. He could hardly explain what tipped the scales in favor of the favorite after all. "But I'm where I am now for a reason, so you have to show some kind of resilience."
"There was more in it" for the last German
For long stretches of the game, Humphries played well below the level he had shown over the past few months. Pietreczko wouldn't have needed an outstanding performance to spring a surprise, but from the sixth set onwards, the Nuremberg player barely found his way into the triple courts. "I don't know what the problem was. I returned to the stage after the fourth set and resolved to play as if it was 0:0," commented "Pikachu", who was available to answer questions from the media despite his defeat.
When asked about his personal assessment of his World Cup debut - including making it to the third round and almost pulling off a surprise against the top favorites - Pietreczko referred to his home country. "That was a good debut, but there was more to come. The Franconian would say: Bassd scho!"
However, Pietreczko did not like the whistles from individual spectators. "There were people to the right of the stage who kept whistling into Humphries' concentration phase. I didn't think that was right. You can be for Luke, you can be for me, but please never whistle. That bothers us all, it's just not acceptable."
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Despite his struggles, Luke Humphries managed to qualify for the World Darts Championships' semi-finals, showcasing his resilience and determination to bounce back after a challenging match.
Despite advancing to the later stages of the World Darts Championships, Luke Humphries expressed frustration over the disruptive behavior of certain spectators, often affecting his concentration and performance during crucial moments of the tournament.
Source: www.ntv.de
