Raymond van Barneveld has made an excellent start to the
Flanders Darts Trophy. In the opening round of this tenth tournament of the
European Tour this year, he was 6-0 too strong for his compatriot Maik Kuivenhoven. Van Barneveld meets another Dutchman in the next round with Danny Noppert.
Van Barneveld ended up with an average of 98.02, which could have been much higher. In the last leg, he missed some chances for a double, otherwise his average would have been well above 100 and for the doyen of Dutch darts it was all about the confidence it brought.
"I got these darts already for two weeks now. I went to the headquarters of Target and was thinking I should've done this last week in Hildesheim and I didn't. In practice they were so good but I didn't want to try them last week so I tried my normal setup. Last week I was practicing with them and I was thinking this is going so good," said Van Barneveld.
"I had 90 throws at the 20 and only one time hit the single one. The first four or five legs were amazing. I started thinking in the last leg if not like you say it would've been 110. Pleased with how I'm playing tonight, I'm over the moon."
Also it was noticed that his throw had a bit more snap in it which was also a recent change from the five-time World Champion.
"If I release my dart like this, I'm always under the treble 20. I try to aim now and normally I play 23 or 25 gram, this is 21. Finally on stage I do what I did on the practice board. I played nine Euro Tours, five time I got beaten on the Friday night, three times I got beat on the Saturday night so I'm pleased to get some ranking points. The crowd was amazing, they support me like they always do but finally I can show them my game. What I can do and I am really pleased."
