Sporting Life
Daryl Gurney and Brendan Dolan celebrate for Northern Ireland (Picture: Stefan Strassenberg/PDC Europe)
Daryl Gurney and Brendan Dolan celebrate for Northern Ireland (Picture: Stefan Strassenberg/PDC Europe)

World Cup of Darts: Pairs matches make the event special and we need more of them, writes Paul Nicholson

By Paul Nicholson
Darts
Fri June 17, 2022 · 2y ago

Paul Nicholson believes the World Cup of Darts needs a slight format change to give more emphasis on pairs matches beyond the opening round.

Nicholson was part of the Australian side alongside Simon Whitlock for the first five stagings of the tournament from 2010 to 2015, including their memorable run to the 2012 final that ended in agonisingly heartbreak, so who better than the Asset to analyse the importance of team spirit and the pairs format ahead of this year’s event?!

The commentator also gives you his thoughts on who will triumph this weekend and thinks there could be a shock...

World Cup of Darts 2012 Final - Sudden death - England v Australia

Perils of Pairs

The pairs format of the first round is incredibly cut-throat and shocks can happen anywhere. It’s a completely different type of game to singles.

Your usual playing rhythm goes out of the window as you obviously have to wait a lot longer between your own visits, and this means you have to be even more focused on the fewer darts that you do get to throw.

Having more people on stage is also difficult for some players to get used to, while there’s also the pressure of having the national shirt on your back.

Therefore, I think whoever goes deep in this is going to have previous experience of playing in a World Cup or pairs tournaments. The first round is always the worst game unless you get embroiled in some sort of sudden death leg in a semi or final - which I know lots about (!) - but if you can come through it with confidence and chemistry you can go very, very far.

The first round is nerve-wracking and if you can go backstage and hammer out a really good bond with your partner before you play your first game, that's half the battle won.

However, if you don't get along with your partner, don't feel comfortable with them or don't feel comfortable with the rhythm of pairs, you're going to come a cropper.

A few years ago, Peter Wright and Gary Anderson weren’t on each other's Christmas card list and suffered some disappointing results together.

However, last year they looked relaxed and almost as though they were having a laugh with each other. They took it all in their stride and were ultimately that much better than everybody else and won it.

More pairs please

There’s no question about it – there should be doubles rubbers in every single match at the World Cup. I’m not even sure why that hasn’t come into force yet.

The only certainty of a doubles rubber comes in the first round – when matches are decided by one best-of-nine leg encounter – and in the final, where it precedes the reverse singles rubbers. But apart from that, the second round, quarter-finals and semi-finals could all be decided by a team winning both singles matches.

The doubles format has always been seen as a leveller. Even though the big nations like England (x4), Netherlands (x4), Scotland and Wales are the only ones to win this event, it doesn’t mean they’ve breezed it or never suffered early exits in the doubles.

Phil Taylor and James Wade crashed out in the very first edition to Spain while Scotland have only won it once with their obvious strength and in 2017 they famously lost to Singapore, who then dumped out Wales a year later.

It’s the most exciting format of the World Cup and gets the juices going for fans and players alike. Having played in the tournament myself, it gives you that element of doubt and you need chemistry with your partner. I was always very lucky when it came to pairs because Simon Whitlock is one of the best pairs players the world has ever seen and it doesn’t matter who he plays with. He knows the complexities of it and makes that chemistry happen.

The singles gets some teams without chemistry out of jail and that’s why we do see big names reaching the latter stages so frequently.

One solution would be to make all matches a longer doubles rubber such as best-of-19 but I would prefer to see two singles matches as usual, followed by a guaranteed doubles rubber which is worth two points.

Therefore, if it’s 1-1 after the singles then the doubles is the decider, and if it’s 2-0 after the singles then the losing team still has a chance to level it up. If they make it 2-2 with a doubles win, then we have a sudden death doubles leg. What’s not to love about that?

We must make sure the pairs element is more crucial.

One-man teams

In pairs you often need one player to be in blockbuster form and the other to chip in with the odd ton. No team can really afford to have a player that’s carried too much.

Jose De Sousa and Devon Petersen are two prime examples of players who are considerably better than their team-mates who the casual darts fans won't have heard of.

You can assume their usual averages will be around 78 to 87 so if they can back them up with a few decent scores – or the odd winning double - then there’s no reason why they can’t get through the first two rounds.

The overall standard in South Africa is pretty good but they haven’t had the kind of exposure that Devon has created for himself over the past few years and that’s helped make him the player he is today.

Up for the Cup

From my experience as a commentator and a player, there are some competitors who look forward to this event a lot more than others. Some aren’t too sure about it due to the lack of ranking money but for others it’s one of the most important events in their calendars.

Belgium fall into the latter category – just look at how Kim Huybrechts has famously celebrated down the years and how well he performs. He’d probably want to win this more than anyone and while he’d have loved to do it with his brother back in the day, he obviously has a better partner in Dimitri Van den Bergh from an overall performance perspective.

I know it seems that I probably enjoyed the World Cup more than any other event but I actually felt more pressure playing for Australia. I had this fire inside me that I wanted to pay them back for everything they did to support my career and in retrospect I put too much pressure on myself. I obviously came ridiculously close one year against England and I think that pressure was a pivotal factor in not getting over the line.

Overall, how can you not enjoy playing with a country’s colours on your back, especially when you have a partner like Simon Whitlock. I loved it, but the tournament broke my heart many times!

'That' final in 2012

This isn’t just missed match darts from one player…it’s missed match darts from three of the four of us!

I defy anyone who thinks we’ll get a more dramatic World Cup final than this one and I can honestly say I’ve never felt pressure of that intensity in my entire life – before or since.

So, this incredible match goes right down to a sudden death leg before I miss two title darts, Phil Taylor misses two and then Simon Whitlock also misses two. Adrian Lewis, who’d only managed to leave Taylor 56 from 88 in his previous visit, then managed to pin double five at the first attempt to break our hearts.

Even now I find it difficult to put it into words. I watched it back again recently for the first time in years and saw myself walking around at the back of the stage in a figure of eight pattern not knowing what to do with myself. I know it’s only sport, but how often do you get the chance to win a World Cup?

Now let’s look at what happened to all four players after this. Taylor and Lewis obviously went on and won plenty more titles and majors between them, Whitlock responded very well by winning the European Championship that same year, but I never won another title in the PDC.

I was so mentally scarred it took me a long time to recover from that. I’ve always been known for having a thin skin but that tournament did leave a deep scar even to this day.

I’ve always felt as though my missed darts in the World Cup final are remembered more than anyone else’s due to my reaction to it afterwards, and that also hurts.

I remember having three match darts at double 12 in the 2013 European Darts Trophy final against Wes Newton and my mind triggered back to the World Cup final. I subsequently missed my attempts at double 12 and double 6 as well.

We often say in sport that players have confidence streaks because their most recent memory are their winning putts, doubles, or titles. But some, like me, look back too often at the negative moments rather than all the good stuff that happened before it.

If I’d won the World Cup, I’m convinced I would have gone on to win more titles in the PDC but instead I let the failure leave a big indelible mark on my life and career.

I think it was obvious how much more Simon and I wanted to win that final more for Australia, but Adrian Lewis has often spoken about his pride – and you can see the emotional rollarcoaster he was on during the sudden-death leg!

When he’s interviewed and referenced as a former World champion, he’ll often remind the people of the World Cups he won with Phil Taylor.

The one positive I can take is that I played a part in a final which really put the World Cup on the darting map as a tournament. It was only the second time it had been staged and therefore didn’t have the long history which gives many established events their gravitas.

Predictions for 2022

If you are looking for early first-round upsets then look no further than England v Czech Republic. That's an absolutely horrendous draw for Michael Smith and James Wade because both Adam Gawlas and Karel Sedlacek could really cause them problems in a one-off pairs match.

I think there will be a new winner of the event and it will be either Australia or Belgium, who are in the same quarter of the draw.

Damon Heta and Simon Whitlock have a great draw against Lithuania to get settled while I think Dimitri Van den Bergh and Kim Huybrechts will have too much in the tank for Japan.

The other nations in this section are Poland, USA, Sweden and South Africa but I'd fancy the Aussies and Belgiums to come through those tests and meet each other for a place in the semis.

With all due respect to the defending champions Scotland, I don't think Peter Wright and John Henderson are at the top of their games and they also have a tricky opening-round clash against Hong Kong.

Wales are the tournament favourites and should breeze past Philippines but Austria's Mensur Suljovic and Rowby-John Rodriguez could be very dangerous for them in round two having reached last year's final.

The winner of that will probably end up playing Germany, who are represented by Martin Schindler and Gabriel Clemens, and that will be a very hard match to call.

The Netherlands don't have Michael van Gerwen, who is having surgery this week on his injured hand, but he would have been playing alongside Danny Noppert and we all know they aren't the best of friends! So Noppert and Dirk van Duijvenbode should create a better team spirit that carries them through a quarter that includes Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

I do usually back Daryl Gurney and Brendan Dolan but they tend to let me down!

We all want to be the person who predicts a new winner and I'm going for Australia.

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