Martin Schindler - From the shadow of Max Hopp to the German number one with a stumbling block

Martin Schindler was born on August 16, 1996 in Strausberg. He has been playing professional darts since 2014. He was a member of the BDO until 2015, but then switched to the PDC, where he has been playing ever since.

In his early days, he took part in several PDC European Tour tournaments, as well as the European Darts Trophy 2015 and the Dutch Masters of the same year, in both of which the German was eliminated in the first round.

The following year, he qualified for the PDC World Youth Championship, where he reached the last 16. Spurred on by this performance, Schindler registered for Q-School 2017, where he won the Tour Card on the final day. This entitled him to compete in the World Cup of Darts 2017 together with Max Hopp, in whose shadow The Wall was able to develop as the German number two. Together they made it through to the quarter-finals, where they were beaten by Michael van Gerwen and Raymond van Barneveld, who were competing for the Netherlands.

The World Darts Championship 2018 was the first darts world championship in which Schindler competed. However, he was eliminated in the very first round, in which he faced Simon Whitlock, with a score of 1-3.

Participation in the UK Open, the World Cup of Darts and the PDC World Youth Championship followed this year. At the latter event, he made it to the final, but was only runner up.

This was Schindler's last success for two years for the time being. He gradually fell further and further down the Order of Merit until he found himself in 65th place in the Order of Merit at the end of 2020 and lost his PDC Tour Card as a result. A hard blow for Schindler was that he also lost his sponsor and supplier at the same time, but this setback did not demotivate The Wall. On the contrary: he played the Q-School again at the start of 2021 and managed to secure the Tour Card for the current and coming year. It seemed that the Tour Card loss was what shook Schindler awake. He found new sponsors and suppliers and began to love the stage, on which he had never really felt comfortable until then, according to him. He changed his walk-on song and has been performing with Rammstein at European Tour tournaments ever since.

After one year, Schindler was already 67th in the Order of Merit, and in March 2022 he was in the top 64 In November of the same year, he stormed into the top 32 for the first time in his career to finish the year in 29th place.

At the PDC World Darts Championship 2023, The Wall competed for the first time as a seeded player, starting in the second round. Here he won his first match at the World Championship by eliminating Martin Lukeman from the tournament with a 3-1 win in sets. In the third round, Schindler faced Michael Smith. After a tough match, he was narrowly defeated 3-4.

By reaching the quarter-finals at the UK Open, The Wall has set a new German record. No German had ever made it this far at this tournament before. It is also Schindler's first quarter-final at a major. Here, however, he was defeated 10-4 by Andrew Gilding.

Schindler wrote another piece of German darts history at the World Grand Prix 2023, becoming the first German to reach the quarter-finals of this tournament with victories over Raymond van Barneveld (2-1) and Stephen Bunting (3-2). But this was the end of the line for The Wall. Gerwyn Price was simply too big for the German with 3-0.

After Schindler had already managed a 9-darter at Q-School, he managed to throw his first nine-darter in a ranking tournament at Players Championship 10 in 2023. Of course, this also had an impact on Schindler's Order of Merit. He finished the year in 26th place, just behind the German number one Gabriel Clemens.

He set a major milestone at the International Darts Open 2024 when he defeated Gerwyn Price 8-5 in the final of this European Tour tournament to win his first PDC ranking title. This made him the third German after Max Hopp and Ricardo Pietreczko to win a PDC ranking tournament.

This victory marked the beginning of another era for Schindler. Since then, he has been the German number one, having always stood in the shadow of Max Hopp and later Gabriel Clemens. With 322,000 pounds, Schindler currently has a lead of 6,500 pounds over Clemens and is ranked 23rd in the Order of Merit.
He is also ranked 13th in the Pro Tour Order of Merit and can therefore look forward to taking part in the 2024 World Matchplay.

Whether The Wall will be able to deal with the attention generated by his title win remains to be seen. However, the Strausberg native, who became a father in December 2022, has shown since his new start in the PDC that he can overcome many a hurdle and is capable of working on himself successfully.