25/08/2024

This surprising player is for now the best performing player on the PDC Pro Tour in 2024

Not Luke Littler or Luke Humphries, but Ross Smith is, for now, the best performing player on the PDC Pro Tour in 2024. The Pro Tour rankings include all Players Championship tournaments and Euro Tour tournaments.

For now nineteen of the thirty Players Championship tournaments and eight of the thirteen Euro Tour tournaments have been played. In the 27 completed Pro Tour events, Ross Smith already earned £105,000 in prize money. That is narrowly ahead of Littler, whose tally stands at 103,500 pounds. Littler did play fewer Pro Tour tournaments, however, as "The Nuke" regularly skips a Players Championship tournament or Euro Tour event.

Smith has not only earned the most prize money, there are more lists in which "Smudger" stands out. He has also thrown by far the most 180 scores. With Smith, the tally already stands at 327, far more than first pursuers Gary Anderson (239), Stephen Bunting (238), Chris Dobey (234) and Danny Noppert (231).

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The 35-year-old Englishman has also won the most Pro Tour matches in 2024. No less than 63 times Smith has already drawn the longest. Chris Dobey (57), Danny Noppert (55), Damon Heta (54), Ryan Searle (53), Stephen Bunting (50) and Daryl Gurney (50) are the only other players with at least 50 wins.

Smith has been in the quarterfinals of a Pro Tour tournament 10 times this year. Only Noppert does better with 12 quarterfinal spots, while Searle, like Smith, has 10. Smith, by the way, managed to advance to the final three times. He lost his two Euro Tour finals, but did win a Players Championship tournament in early July.

Thanks to Smith's good performance on the Pro Tour and a quarterfinal finish at the World Matchplay, he has now moved up to the tenth spot in the world rankings. Smith still has relatively little prize money to defend in the coming weeks, which could theoretically allow him to move up to seventh on the PDC Order of Merit.

An important defence does await Smith at the end of October, when he must defend his European Championship title from two years ago. His title at the European Championship earned him a whopping £120,000 in prize money in 2022. Should 'Smudger' fail to defend this title, he will likely once again fall outside the top-16 in the world rankings.