“Right now he’s not playing like the world number three” – Van der Voort offers brutal reality after Van Gerwen’s miserable PDC World Darts Championship exit

Michael van Gerwen’s early exit at the 2026 PDC World Darts Championship hits hard for Vincent van der Voort. The former player and confidant of the three-time world champion watched his close friend lose 4-1 to Gary Anderson in the fourth round and spoke afterwards about a disappointing yet telling defeat. “The game wasn’t super bad,” Van der Voort says on the podcast Darts Draait Door, “but at the key moments he didn’t show up.”

For the first time since 2016, excluding the Covid year, Van Gerwen is missing from the World Championship quarterfinals. A stat that underlines the seriousness of the situation. “Losing to Gary Anderson can happen,” says Van der Voort. “He’s simply a class player. But you expect more from the world number three. Right now he’s not playing like the world number three.”

Anyone looking only at the averages would not have seen a meltdown. Van Gerwen averaged nearly a ton over the match and was scoring over a hundred in the first nine darts. Yet according to Van der Voort the difference lay in the details. “Too many visits without trebles. That didn’t used to happen to him. Where he normally struck at crucial moments, he let it slip now.”

That pattern was evident early. In the opening sets Van Gerwen had chances he would normally punish without mercy. “In the first set Anderson keeps him completely in it,” Van der Voort analyses. “But Michael doesn’t push on after that himself. In the past that was the moment he’d show: this was your mistake, now it’s over.”

The third set still offered hope. Van Gerwen played his best darts of the match there and seemed to seize the momentum. But right after that it went wrong again. “Then you give away the first leg so easily again,” sighs Van der Voort. “That’s happening to him too often now. It has to do with match sharpness and form.”

According to the former pro, it’s a logical consequence of a year in which Van Gerwen rarely hit his familiar level. “You can’t do little for almost a year and then expect to get away with it on this stage. At this level that’s no longer enough.”

Van der Voort does not want to write off Van Gerwen’s World Championship campaign entirely. “It’s not a straight fail,” he emphasises. “But it is meagre. You don’t need to put a number on it.” At the same time, there is clear concern. “It’s too erratic. One day he’s there, the next he’s not. That’s not the level that belongs to him.”

Van der Voort therefore does not see the defeat to Anderson as an isolated incident. “This didn’t go wrong today. This comes from somewhere. He’s had a very difficult year.”

After the match, Van der Voort spoke to Van Gerwen by phone. “He’s sick to his stomach,” he says. “He’s still a winner, that’s definitely still in there. He did everything to be as good as possible today. The preparation was good. It just wasn’t good enough.” Van der Voort does not blame his friend. “This isn’t unwillingness. But if it’s not there, it’s not there. And you have to face that.”

A crucial phase now awaits Van Gerwen’s career. He finished this year 21st on the Order of Merit and has a lot of prize money to defend next season. “If you have another year like this, you can simply drop out of the top sixteen,” Van der Voort warns. “That sounds bizarre, but it’s very possible.”

The competition isn’t standing still. Players like Jonny Clayton and Gian van Veen are breathing down his neck. “Gian plays everything,” says Van der Voort. “He’s a young, hungry dog. You’re going to see more and more of those guys.”

Next week Van der Voort and Van Gerwen will sit down together. For him, the key question is already clear. “What do you still want yourself? It’s his career. He decides everything. I can only point out what I see and what’s coming.”

Van der Voort is hoping for one thing. “I hope he says: we’re going a hundred percent for it this year. That he feels that hunger again. I would really love to hear that.”