Monday, March 3, 2025
Column CM143
The UK Open 2025 – Greaves shines in Minehead
On the first day of the UK Open in Minehead, Beau Greaves once again wrote history. Never before had a woman managed to reach the fourth round in the UK Open – and she showed strong performances, which many of her male colleagues didn’t on this first day. 
The first day of the tournament is always the most hectic and I can’t say it was different this year. The best chance to really see matches is to watch Center Stage, where action is on six boards at the same time, and so I passed most of my time there – wandering over several times to the other stages, for example, to watch Beau Greaves matches, and back to the main stage. Greaves played three of her four matches there and only one at one of the multiple boards – and that was the one I missed. It was not only impressive that she won but it was also impressive to see how self-confident she seemed and how well she played.
In the end, Greaves lost in the in the fourth round against a strong playing – and probably much more used to the longer format – Luke Humphries with 7-10.
Only one of the players who had entered the tournament on day 1 was still in when the day ended – young Dutchman Jurjen van der Velde who had lost last year in a close final of the PDC World Youth Championship to Gian van Veen. It seemed every time I went to Centre Stage van der Velde stood at one of the oches. All of his four wins came as he seemed to play under the radar. In none of his first three matches did he lose more then three legs and none of his four matches was close.. But it is nevertheless difficult to predict what will happen in the fifth round when he will play on the second stage against Nathan Aspinall. Aspinall so far has had only one match – against Martin Lukeman which he won, though he looked far from happy with the way he played.
From the Top 32 who joined the tournament in the fourth round eleven were out after the first match – among them were Gerwyn Price and Stephen Bunting, two of the Premier League players. Stephen Bunting lost to Chris Dobey, Price lost a close match to Connor Scutt and when you look at the statistics one can see they in fact played quite well. The always popular Gary Anderson lost to Jonny Clayton and had no chance at all. At least his last few legs were quite good, but by then he was too far behind to change a thing.
From among the amateur qualifiers Graham Usher and Tom Sykes reached the third round where they lost to William O’Connor and Raymond van Barneveld respectively. Usher had been a Tour Card holder until the end of the last year and reached in 2024 the fifth round of the UK Open while Tom Sykes plays on the Challenge Tour and took part without success in Qualifying School. On the Challenge Tour he played in the first event this year at a 110 average and he looked quite good in his first two UK Open matches too.
The German record of the first day was not good. Tim Wolters withdrew, the new Tour Card Holders Max Hopp, Kai Gotthardt, Maximilian Czerwinski and Leon Weber lost in the first round with unconvincing performances. I had hoped for something better there and certainly for a better than not even 80 average from Max Hopp who has a lot of experience as well on the big stage. Dominik Gruellich and Niko Springer won their first two matches but lost third round to Nick Kenny and Dylan Slevin. Springer at least impressed with an 115.92 average in his first match on the second stage.
As well in the third round – and for them after the first match – the tournament was over for Gabriel Clemens, Florian Hempel and Lukas Wenig. Ricardo Pietreczko and Martin Schindler joined in fourth round but only Schindler survived the round and his first match – Pietreczko lost to Madars Razma. Schindler won against Mario Vandenboagaerde and is now the last German standing. From the two Austrian players it was Mensur Suljovic who progressed – Rusty-Jake Rodriguez lost in the second round to Graham Usher.
From the top players besides Humphries, Peter Wright and Luke Littler looked good, but as they were drawn to play one another Wright was eliminated despite an average of over 100. Michael van Gerwen on the other side had to battle hard to win against Dirk van Duijvenbode and reigning champion Dimitri van den Bergh couldn’t convince in his fourth round match against Raymond van Barneveld and will have to improve a lot if he wants to defend the title.
All in all it was once again an entertaining and varied first tournament day – thoiugh we didn’t see any real upsets. And, remarkable as well, besides Greaves performance the sun also shone in Minehead today.
