ANALYSIS: What would the PDC Order of Merit look like with a tennis type ranking system?

Since it was announced that the prize money for the World Darts Championship is going up significantly from the next edition, the call for a different ranking system has become louder and louder. Our friends at DartsNieuws.com took the question and made it a reality to set out and find out what the PDC Order of Merit would look like with a points system.

Devised with tennis in mind and how the ATP (the professional men's tennis association) has designed their rankings. They largely used the distribution of points at tennis tournaments for this project. There are a number of categories, with of course the World Championships as the most important tournament where the most points can be distributed, similar to the Grand Slams in tennis. These include the World Matchplay, World Grand Prix and Grand Slam of Darts, the majors shown on Sky Sports. The points are similar to the Masters (ATP1000) tournaments on the ATP Tour. The Masters, UK Open, European Championship and Players Championship Finals are in the third category, which in tennis is comparable to ATP 500 level. Below that are the European Tour tournaments and the Players Championship tournaments.

Currently, no prize money is paid out in qualifying tournaments, which in itself is quite strange because a defeat in the first round of a qualifier is now thus rated as high as losing a final round in a qualifying tournament, exactly zero points. As a result, the difference between placing or not placing is sometimes too big. Hence, to calculate for this points ranking, I assigned points for losing in the semifinals and finals of a qualifying tournament for the Euro Tour or the majors Winmau World Masters and Grand Slam of Darts. In the Tour Card qualifying tournament for the PDC World Darts Championship, some points were even awarded for losing in the quarterfinals of the qualifier.

The chart below shows the distribution of points for each tournament. Besides awarding points to players who lose to qualifiers in the final stages, another major difference is the status of the World Darts Championship. Under this system, the world champion receives 2,500 points, the same amount as winning the World Matchplay, World Grand Prix and UK Open. From the next edition of the World Championship, the world champion will receive a sum of one million pounds. Another player must win the World Matchplay, Grand Slam of Darts, World Grand Prix, Players Championship Finals and the European Championship all to get to that same amount. This points format makes it a fairer ratio.

A third component added is the scrapping of the Tour Card system. This means that the results of the players from the current top-70 of the PDC Order of Merit from May 20, 2023 to May 19, 2025 are purely taken into account. For example, Jeffrey de Graaf's participation in the 2024 World Darts Championship is thus counted for this points ranking, while this result on the official PDC Order of Merit is deleted because De Graaf did not have a Tour Card after the World Darts Championship.

In tennis, there is no Tour Card system either and players are invited to tournaments based on their position in the world rankings. Lower ranked players can work their way up the world rankings through the so-called Challenger tournaments. In darts, you could also throw open the Challenge Tour to all players, which would give, for example, the world number 43 the chance to play tournaments in a free weekend. The Tour Card system would disappear in that case, causing the PDC to lose a huge cash cow. You could cover this by making each player pay a specific amount to get a PDC license. This license would then give you access to PDC tournaments in a specific year.

It also did not consider whether seeds on the Euro Tour won their first match. The points are tied purely to the result. Now, players who are automatically admitted to the second round on the Euro Tour must win their opening match for the prize money to count toward the ranking.

The first top player to benefit from this set-up is Gerwyn Price. He is sixth on the points rankings, five spots higher than he currently ranks in the world rankings. Other highly ranked players higher on the points ranking are Damon Heta (+2), Dave Chisnall (+2), Ross Smith (+3), Josh Rock (+3), Ryan Searle (+2), Joe Cullen (+4), Ryan Joyce (+2) and Dirk van Duijvenbode (+3).

Lower down the rankings, Cameron Menzies (+3), Connor Scutt (+8), Alan Soutar (+3), Robert Owen (+3) and Mario Vandenbogaerde (+8) also benefit from this revamped format.

Nathan Aspinall is currently eighth in the world rankings, but when using this scoring system, 'The Asp' falls back to the fifteenth spot. James Wade also then loses his listing in the top-10, trading the ninth spot for the thirteenth position.

For the reigning European Championship winner Ritchie Edhouse, this set-up also does not work out so well. He loses as many as seven spots, which is mainly due to the fact that winning the European Championship brings comparatively less than it does now.

Peter Wright also falls down as he goes down three spots. He is just about to leave the top 16 now and this would confound him to that fate much quicker.

Michael Smith also goes down even further to World No.22 down two spots, while Dimitri van den Bergh would go down three spots.

Matt Campbell and Keane Barry will also hope that this point system is not actually implemented. Matt Campbell is down six spots, ranking 60th on the points ranking. Keane Barry has dropped even eleven spots, ranking 64th. Same can be said for Dylan Slevin who would go down four spots.

It is striking to note that the difference between number one Luke Humphries and Luke Littler remains virtually the same when moving to this point system. Littler has won 30.72 percent less ranking prize money than Humphries, while the difference in points is 30.85 percent. So that difference is negligible.

Anyway, there are not very many shifts in the top-10. Of these ten players, six are at the position they are also at on the PDC Order of Merit. Also, it seems that players who perform more consistently are improving on those who are currently higher because of outliers. A good example is Damon Heta, who rarely loses his first round. The same is also true of Ross Smith, who regularly enters final stages of Pro Tour tournaments and has also grabbed a number of titles.

The PDC recently opened the door to a ranking change. In an interview with talkSPORT.com, PDC boss Matt Porter indicated that the concerns are being heard. "Look, it's obvious that the £1m for the world champion will make them No.1," he admits.

"But that likely happens anyway even like now when you win £500,000 at Alexandra Palace." Still, Porter acknowledges that balance must be maintained. "We want to make sure the rankings system is fair and equitable. We sit down with the Players Association every year, and we discuss changes we could make," he explains. "We will sit down with them in our normal meeting, I'm not saying we will change it and I'm not saying we won't."