"It’s my fault for the situation I’m in" - Rob Cross at risk of tumbling down rankings with major tournament qualification uncertain

Rob Cross safely made it through to the third round of the 2025 Swiss Darts Trophy on Saturday afternoon, securing a solid 6-2 victory over Richard Veenstra. With an average of 94.61 and six out of fifteen on the doubles, 'Voltage' put in a solid performance according to the numbers, but afterwards the former world champion still wasn't best pleased.

Cross may have had some high points in 2025, with success on the Players Championship circuit and a title win at the Dutch Darts Masters, but in the major tournaments he has stalled. In all eight European Tour events in which he played, he is yet to get past the last 16 and in the five majors of this year, his best result is a quarter-final. Because of this patchy form, Cross is currently 31st on the European Championship rankings. With one Euro Tour event to go after this one, and only the top 32 making the cut, Cross is living dangerously.

“We’re getting to the end of it now. We’ve got two more [European Tour events] maybe a little bit of frustration there, thinking to myself I’ve slipped up early and I have missed a few Europeans," Cross reflected post-match. “But I fully understand that it’s my fault for the situation I’m in."

The Englishman, however, refuses to be paralyzed by the pressure. “I need to get there, and I need to get qualified, because obviously the European Championship Finals is very important. Yeah, so just got to put the best work in now, so there won’t be no crying or nothing. You just got to go out there, man it out, tough it out, and get the results really."

“One minute, you there, next minute you’re gone you know, can’t win a second game," Cross added. “Don’t get me wrong, I love to win and make every quarter final of every tournament. I like to win every tournament. But for whatever reason, if it’s not worked out, I’m sure that it’s got to and it will do.”

Cross, a four-time major winner - including the European Championship - knows there will be extra pressure on the ranking later this year. He has to defend prize money from his 2023 Grand Slam final and 2024 World Darts Championship semifinals. Still, he remains level-headed about it.

“I’ve been very fortunate for seven years. I don’t think I’ve very rarely been out the top 10. Wherever it ends up in January is fine, and I’ll deal with that. And it could be great in January, it could be even worse, you know. I won’t put pressure on myself. I think there’s only really one number in the world, in the world ranking system that really matters to me, and I’ve never had that, so that’s number one," concludes the Englishman. “The rest of it, if I was number two or 12 or whatever, it really doesn’t matter to me. If I was number one, it mattered. But the rest of it, no pressure.”