Why aren't Luke Littler, Stephen Bunting, Peter Wright and James Wade playing this week's Players Championship double header

Players Championship 26-27 are taking place on Tuesday 9 September and Wednesday 10 September in Hildesheim, Germany but while many big names including Michael van Gerwen, Gerwyn Price and Luke Humphries have made the trip others have not.

Luke Littler is the leading absentee which doesn't do his hopes of qualifying for Minehead a whole load of good. He is currently in 54th spot and while he is inside the positions at the moment, that could all change with a few players further down who could breach the top 64.

Albeit it could also be construed as being good schedule management from 'The Nuke' who of course will be the main attraction at majors as well as in European Tours in the coming weeks. His next scheduled tournament is the World Series of Darts Finals in Amsterdam which starts on Friday September 12.

He is then due currently to play the remainder of the European Tours before the World Grand Prix. He has signed up for Budapest, Basel and intriguingly due to his 'ban' on playing European Tours in Germany, he will return to Hildesheim albeit for a Euro Tour not a Players Championship.
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But as well as Littler, there are a myriad of names missing these next two days. Often expected in Hildesheim given that most of the Tour Card holders missing are British. Stephen Bunting who has been such a force this season is the other miss.

He is top seed in Amsterdam this weekend. As well as others involved in the next major including Jonny Clayton, Rob Cross, Chris Dobey, Josh Rock, James Wade and Mike de Decker who will all play this weekend and so have skipped these next two days with a mad dash if not to get to Amsterdam.

Gerwyn Price already documented his journey to get from Prague to Hildesheim with multiple different modes of transport so for those who played in Prague it is likely they will just go back to the UK for a few days or fly straight to the Dutch capital.

Other additions late to the list today are George Killington, Greg Ritchie, Wade as mentioned as well as De Decker. Jose de Sousa, Rusty-Jake Rodriguez, Ryan Joyce and William Borland all also won't travel which has brought in Lee Cocks, Sam Spivey, Dragutin Horvat, Colin Osborne, Martin Thomas, Charlie Manby, Jenson Walker and Jeffrey Sparidaans as late replacements.

While the ProTours still have star power, it also shows a disparity with many of the big stars preferring to play in the non ranked major at the weekend than play the bread and butter events so to speak during the week. Albeit another debate is of course the calendar and schedule management with many majors coming up in the next few months. But at a pivotal time in the race to Minehead, some players deciding against playing perhaps don't have a huge case.