Top 8 for Dubai Duty Free Darts Masters

Dubai: Sports fans are being promised something ‘rather special’ on Thursday and Friday in the Dubai Tennis Stadium when the inaugural Dubai Duty Free Darts Masters comes to town.

The world’s top-eight darts players will be competing for a top prize of $50,000 (Dh183,603), with the quarter-finals being held on Thursday night between 8pm and 12am and the semi-finals and final at the same times on Friday.

Sixteen-time world champion Phil Taylor, considered one of the greatest sportsmen in the world by event organiser Barry Hearn, is top of the bill. He will be joined by world number two, the exciting young Dutchman Michael van Gerwen, who claimed victory in the UK’s prestigious Premier League competition last week after beating Taylor 10-8 in the final.

Also competing are two-time world champion Adrian Lewis, the world number three; seven-time major title winner James Wade; European champion Simon Whitlock; two-time major finalists Andy Hamilton and Wes Newton; and five-time world champion Raymond van Barneveld.

Speaking at the draw for the quarter-finals at the Jumeirah Creekside Hotel on Wednesday, Hearn, the chairman of the Professional Darts Corporation, said: “This is the first event of the World Series of Darts, with another event planned in Sydney at the end of August, and it’s fitting that we’ve come to Dubai, the centrepiece of sporting action in this part of the world.”

Hearn, a veteran boxing and snooker promoter in the UK, has masterminded the astonishing rise in global popularity of darts, which is now the second most-watched sport on television in the UK behind English Premier League football.

Its success owes much to the carnival atmosphere generated by raucous, placard-waving fans in packed arenas, where the players make boxing-style entrances to catchy pop anthems.

Hearn expects similar scenes of frenzy and frivolity to be witnessed in Dubai, revealing that 6,000 people in total are expected to watch the action over the two days. “We’re expecting big and lively crowds and some fabulous darts. I believe we’re doing to see something rather special over the next few days,” he said.

Hearn added that the action would be beamed via television into the living rooms of tens of millions of sports fans around the world, reflecting the burgeoning appeal of the sport.

World number one Taylor said: “This is as big as the world championships for me, if not any bigger. I don’t think you can go anywhere else in the world bigger than this. This is Las Vegas times 100 to me and it’s a dream to come here.”

Colm McLoughlin, the executive vice-chairman of tournament sponsors Dubai Duty Free, said: “We started our tennis tournament here 21 years ago and it has really grown in that time, and I visualise the same thing happening to the Dubai Duty Free Darts Masters tournament. I look forward to seeing it grow and grow, as other events we have been involved in have done.”