World champion Luke Humphries and former World Matchplay champion Dimitri Van den Bergh were involved in an enthralling quarter-final tie at the 2024 edition of the Winter Gardens' darting spectacle on Thursday night.
In the end, a late surge from Humphries fired the world number one into the World Matchplay semi-finals for the second straight year, with a 16-10 win over his Belgian opponent. That surge from 'Cool Hand Luke' all began following a flashpoint in leg 22 however.
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With the game delicately poised at 11-10 in Humphries' favour, Van den Bergh was beginning to start feeling the pressure. As he often does in such circumstances, the Belgian then began to take his time and go through his pre-throw routine in order to get himself ready. It definitely worked too, as the Belgian hit back to back 180s, celebrating the second maximum with a shrug of the shoulders right in front of Humphries.
Despite the successive 180s leaving Van den Bergh waiting on 52 for a level game, Humphries showed his class and pinned a sublime 106 checkout, going single 20, treble 18 and double 16 to keep his opponent at bay. After nailing the double, Humphries retorted with a mocking shoulder shrug of his own, sparking a reaction from Sky Sports commentator Dan Dawson. Van den Bergh took Humphries response well though, laughing it off and congratulating his opponent's brilliance.
"Everyone loves a bit of needle!" Humphries laughed post-match in conversation with Betfred. "But when he hit the two 180s, it's quite an unnatural reaction to shrug your shoulders and I just thought; 'What are you doing?! If this goes, I'm giving it back to you.' I love giving it back and when it happened I thought it was going to be TV gold to be honest."
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