Gerwyn Price wins the International Darts Open (Picture: Tobias Wenzel, PDC Europe)

Darts results: Gerwyn Price beats Rob Cross to defend his International Darts Open title

By Chris Hammer

Darts

Mon September 16, 2019 · 5y ago

Gerwyn Price defeated Rob Cross in the final of the International Darts Open as he successfully defended his title in Riesa.

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Twelve months after overcoming Simon Whitlock to claim his maiden European Tour success here, the Welshman finally bagged his second after edging past the World Matchplay champion 8-6 in a closely-fought final.

Price, who won the Grand Slam of Darts and two Players Championship titles since last year's triumph, now has seven PDC crowns to his name and can head into a big autumn and winter of majors high on confidence.

The 34-year-old battled past Joe Murnan and UK Open winner Nathan Aspinall by 6-4 scorelines earlier in the day but then produced a much better performance to see off Glen Durrant 7-3 in the semi-finals, averaging 101.89 and pinning 53.85% of his doubles.

Price was unable to repeat those sparkling numbers in the final although his average of 93 was three points higher than that of Voltage, who was chasing a first European Tour title of his career, and he finished the job in style with a 108 checkout.

Cross had earlier checked out from 148 to open up a 4-2 advantage only for Price to hit back immediately with a 121 to complete a 12-darter.

Neither player were particularly hot on their finishing, with the former world champion missing 10 of his 16 attempts, with Price converting eight of his 21, while they both hit a pair of 180s each.

The world number seven told www.pdc.tv: "It's the first time I've defended a title, so I'm over the moon. Every game is like that [final] for me now and when I play people like Glen and the top players in the world like Rob, it's never going to be easy. I'm happy to get over the winning line.

"I had three weeks off and after the break I wasn't very confident - I changed my darts, had a new set of darts and it seemed to work for me.

"I usually start pretty well at the beginning of the year and then taper off, hopefully that's a bit different this year. I'm a bit more confident now after winning this one.

"Maybe [I'll have] a weekend off next week and then I can look forward to Gibraltar and the rest of the year."

Cross thrashed last week's European Tour winner Joe Cullen 6-0 in the third round before beating Richard North 6-1 with a third successive average of 100+ having also done the same against John Henderson on Saturday.

His performance dropped in a scrappy 7-6 semi-final win over Peter Wright in which he averaged 91.54 and he further ran out of steam against Price.

He said: "From the semi-final I went all wrong. Fair play to Gezzy there, he played better and deserved to win. I come to the long days and I can't seem to get over that winning line, but I've enjoyed my weekend. It's been fantastic."

Durrant reached first European Tour semi-final after following up a 6-3 third round win over Michael Rosenauer with a superb 6-4 triumph against Daryl Gurney in which he averaged 100 and converted six of his 11 double attempts.

Wright, in reaching his second European Tour semi-final of the month, saw off Austrian Darts Championship winner Mensur Suljovic 6-3 in the last 16 before thrashing Adrian Lewis 6-0 in the quarter-finals.

North was appearing in his first European Tour quarter-final of 2019 after surviving a match dart against Steve West while Lewis and Aspinall also reached the last eight courtesy of 6-2 and 6-5 wins over Jonny Clayton and Ricky Evans respectively.