The Portuguese Jose de Sousa sensationally secured his first European Tour title on Sunday. With this, de Sousa creates a similar surprise as Devon Petersen recently did in Hildesheim. In the final he defeated the world’s number one Michael van Gerwen. De Sousa threw a total of seven 180s, a 146 high finish and played a 105 average. “Today, a dream came true. The crowd was amazing and I have no words for what I achieved today,” said de Sousa.
His opponent Michael van Gerwen had to tremble a lot on the way to the final. Both in the round of sixteen against Vincent van der Voort and in the quarter-finals against Nathan Aspinall, “MvG” had to survive matchdarts. Only in the semi-final against Mensur Suljovic van Gerwen showed an appealing performance when he knocked the Austrian out of the tournament 7-1.
Last year’s winner Ian White made it to the semi-finals this year, but had to admit a defeat in an exciting 6-7 match against the later winner de Sousa. De Sousa was also the one who took out Gerwyn Price in the round of sixteen. Price did not find his top game this weekend and was therefore only allowed to watch the final evening session.
Michael Smith (6-2 against Ian White), Glen Durrant (6-3 against Maik Kuivenhoven) and Joe Cullen (6-2 against Darius Labanauskas) were also eliminated in the round of the last sixteen. Kuivenhoven and Labanauskas, along with de Sousa, are among the big surprises of the tournament with their quarter-final appearances.
The match of the afternoon was between Austrian Mensur Suljovic and Jamie Hughes. Hughes was already leading 5-0 because Suljovic missed loads of his doubles. However, out of nowhere Suljovic managed to take his chances and won the game by six consecutive legs. Jamie Hughes in turn messed up six match darts.
Suljovic continued his great run in the quarter-finals. With a 6:0-whitewash he defeated former World Champion Rob Cross, who could not hold on to his good performance from the round of sixteen (102-average). Suljovic gave the Sindelfingen crowd a great deal of praise in both games. “You got me through the match against Jamie Hughes here today. You were simply great”. Also in his match against Rob Cross the spectators loudly cheered Suljovic on. In the semi-finals, however, Suljovics journey ended. Against a strong Michael van Gerwen Suljovic had not much to oppose and lost clearly with 1:7.
Here once again all results of the day at one glance:
Afternoon session, last 16:
Maik Kuivenhoven 6:3 Glen Durrant
Ian White 6:2 Michael Smith
Darius Labanauskas 6:2 Joe Cullen
Gerwyn Price 3:6 Jose de Sousa
Mensur Suljovic 6:5 Jamie Hughes
Martijn Kleermaker 1:6 Rob Cross
James Wade 2:6 Nathan Aspinall
Michael van Gerwen 6:5 Vincent van der Voort
Evening session, quarter-finals:
Maik Kuivenhoven 4:6 Ian White
Darius Labanauskas 4:6 Jose de Sousa
Mensur Suljovic 6:0 Rob Cross
Nathan Aspinall 5:6 Michael van Gerwen
Semi-finals:
Ian White 6:7 Jose de Sousa
Mensur Suljovic 1:7 Michael van Gerwen
Final:
Jose de Sousa 8:4 Michael van Gerwen
