Melderis and Kantele take titles at Nordic & Baltic ProTour in Gothenburg
PDC
Valters Melderis and Marko Kantele each captured a title at the PDC Nordic & Baltic ProTour 2025 last weekend. At the same time, Swede Johan Engström managed to secure a double qualification for the European Tour on home soil.
The second Nordic & Baltic weekend of the year took place in Gothenburg from March 28-30, with ProTour tournaments 3 and 4 and qualifying tournaments for three Euro Tours. Latvian Melderis experienced a milestone by clinching his first-ever PDC title.
The 40-year-old Melderis defeated Engström 6-4 in the final of the third event on Saturday. He managed to overturn a 4-3 deficit by throwing legs of 13, 13 and 15 darts, reaching a new career high.
Melderis began his route to the final with dominant victories over Albin Harrysson and Kent Jöran Sivertsen, followed by three consecutive 6-3 wins over Edgar Znutins, Anton Östlund and Jonas Masalin.
On Sunday, Melderis was again in the final, but this time experienced Finn Marko Kantele was too strong. The 56-year-old Kantele won five legs in a row and took the title with a convincing 6-2 victory.
Kantele began his tournament with a whitewash against Znutins, after which he defeated Andreas Harrysson and then dealt with Dmitriy Zhukov and Engström to reach the semifinals. In it, he experienced a spectacular comeback against Lithuanian Darius Labanauskas. Kantele was trailing 5-1 and survived almost a dozen match darts to eventually win 6-5.
Johan Engström also had a successful weekend in Gothenburg by qualifying for two European Tour tournaments. In the ET4 qualifying tournament, he managed to qualify for the German Darts Grand Prix in Munich with three decisive leg victories. He started with a 6-1 victory over his compatriot Niklas Olsson and then defeated Par Riihonen, Kantele and Zhukov in exciting decisive legs.
In addition, the 48-year-old Swede also qualified for the European Darts Grand Prix in May. He did this by beating five Danish players as well as Kantele in the ET6 qualifying tournament. Remarkably, Engström lost only three legs in dominant wins over Niels Heinsoe, Tom Veje, Andreas Hyllgaardhus and Simon Bak. After a hard-fought victory over Andreas Toft Jørgensen, he settled with Kantele in the deciding round.
In addition to Engström, Finn Teemu Harju also managed to qualify for a European Tour event. He won the ET5 qualifying tournament and thus secured a ticket to the Austrian Darts Open.
Harju showed resilience by winning five legs in a row over Anton Östlund in the final, after previously trailing 3-1. He began the tournament with smooth wins over Zhukov and Peter Jensen, followed by a decisive leg victory over Labanauskas and a 6-4 win over Melderis in the semifinals.
Nordic & Baltic ProTour 3.
Valters Melderis 6-4 Johan Engstrom
Nordic & Baltic ProTour 4.
Marko Kantele 6-2 Valters Melderis
German Darts Grand Prix (ET4 Qualifier)
Johan Engstrom 6-5 Dmitriy Zhukov
Austrian Darts Open (ET5 Qualifier)
Teemu Harju 6-3 Anton Ostlund
European Darts Grand Prix (ET6 Qualifier)
Johan Engstrom 6-2 Marko Kantele
Just in
Popular news
Latest comments
- The Premier league has literally become a pantomime with a hero and villain, all thats needed is an older dart player in drag to play the joke old woman / queen and a younger woman to play the male hero. Barry is probably working on it now.Mysstree04-04-2025
- Ridiculous the booing for both these players in the final in Germany tonightListerAnderson03-04-2025
- May only have won two PDC Majors but thats two more than most players will ever win. He wasn’t lucky either to beat Taylor and MVG, he outplayed them.Mysstree29-03-2025
- Bunting is having a nightmare.Mysstree28-03-2025
- The next prodigy (prodigies) are just round the corner. Wonder if it gets to the stage of 180 after 180 being hit leg after leg whether there will be a modification to the equipment such as reduced doubles and trebles, reduce the size of the board or length of the oche?Mysstree25-03-2025
- obviously littler has the potential to surpass everybody simply because nobody has been this good at this age before, but people who think he would be any kind of favourite right now against prime taylor in a big final have short memories. it's obvious that prime taylor wouldn't win as many world titles if he was playing today, but there's also good reason to believe he'd be winning more than anybody else. hell, his statistical profile still stands alone in darts history and he might statistically be even better if he was playing today with better equipment, larger beds, more competition therefore more motivation, etc.colt24-03-2025
- Bad idea. Every other Major ranking title prize funds added together do not come to £1 million. Add £500k to the prize pot and spread it out evenly over the draw.Mysstree24-03-2025
- Jake Paul is an arrogant American attention seeker. It would be nice to see - Usyk knock the arrogance out of him... but take his time in doing so.MrYnyslas197123-03-2025
- The Premier League is a glorified promotional tool for piss heads to attend and shout abuse at dart players so averages are not the way to pick the best line up. Throw Peter Manley, Eric Bristow and Jocky Wilson into the mix for some real fireworks.Mysstree22-03-2025
- Concentrate on your darts, Jake Paul would knock seven sacks of **** out of you. Add free site please.Mysstree22-03-2025