"This is unacceptable" - Michael van Gerwen disappoints himself in Dutch Darts Masters defeat to Luke Littler

For Michael van Gerwen the 2025 Dutch Darts Masters turned out to be a big disappointment. The 35-year-old Dutchman went down 6-3 in the quarterfinals against Luke Littler and thus could not take revenge for the recent PDC World Darts Championship final earlier this month.

Van Gerwen never got into his normal rhythm against a Littler who didn't exactly hit the heights himself, and remained stuck at 90 average. "We can talk long or short about it, but this was severely below par," Van Gerwen told Sportnieuws.nl afterwards. "It wasn't all there and I'm incredibly bummed about that. I tried to turn the match around, but the match is actually too short for that. Then you get results like this. It doesn't make sense. I don't think Littler played a fantastic game either."

However, the match was initially balanced. "It was 3-3. But when you look at how the match went, you think, how is it possible? It all has to be better, smoother, easier. It was too rushed, too forced. I can blame myself for this. Now if he blows me off the course with 100 average.... Then I say: fine. But I can't let this happen to myself. This is unacceptable."

Van Gerwen didn't come to Den Bosch with ideal preparation as he recently broke his toe while on vacation in Thailand. That's not to say the mighty Dutchman is looking for excuses though. "I certainly don't want to invoke that as an excuse for this poor performance," he said.

His best friend Vincent van der Voort also had to face Van Gerwen's lousy performance. "It was just not good scoring-wise," Van der Voort said. "It was very inconsistent, but that doesn't surprise me. He obviously didn't do very much after the World Darts Championship, just played a little bit on vacation."