Jermaine Wattimena survives multitude of missed matchdarts from Van den Bergh to book Grand Slam quarterfinal spot in dramatic decider

Jermaine Wattimena has become the latest name to book their spot in the last eight of the 2024 Grand Slam of Darts in Wolverhampton, thanks to a dramatic 10-9 victory over Dimitri van den Bergh.

To get to the knockout stages, Wattimena continued his form of recent weeks, with the European Championship final as the absolute highlight, with a convincing group win. 'The Machine Gun' won convincingly over Mike de Decker (5-2) and Michael Smith (5-1), before also beating Mensur Suljovic (5-4). Van den Bergh meanwhile, did not have a scintillating start to the group stage. He beat Lourence Ilagan 5-1, but his play clearly left much to be desired. Then followed a hopeless 5-1 defeat against Luke Littler. 'The Dreammaker' then had to beat Keane Barry to reach the last sixteen. Van den Bergh did just that with a 5-1 win over the Irishman with an average of 104.58.

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Van den Bergh continued that string form early on in this last 16 time too. Flying out of the blocks, Van den Bergh raced into a 4-0 lead in the opening session, before Wattimena got himself on the board in the 5th leg as they headed off stage with the score 4-1 to the Belgian.

With the momentum then fully switching to the side of Wattimena, it was the Dutchman's turn to build up a head of steam and go on a roll by winning six of the next seven legs and actually nudging himself in front at 7-5.

Credit to Van den Bergh though, he didn't fold and grasped back control of the contest as the finish line neared. The Belgian punished some sloppy finishing from his opponent to get back on level terms at 8-8 and moved one away from victory himself with a 13-darter. Wattimena didn't allow Van den Bergh a matchdart in leg 18 though, forcing a decider. Van den Bergh then had the darts in the decider and that looked to have proven telling as he got down to the double first. Incredibly though, the UK Open champion blew eight matchdarts allowing Wattimena to snatch victory in the most dramatic or circumstances.

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