Monday, December 27, 2021
Disillusionment instead of surprise
Darts World Cup ends abruptly for nervous Hempel
He completely surprisingly defeated the world-class player Dimitri van den Bergh, but then retired against an outsider: the Darts World Cup is over for Florian Hempel. His amazing debut and the whole year speak for the 31-year-old.
Florian Hempel’s amazing World Cup debut came to an abrupt end after the short Christmas break. The German darts professional lost 4-1 to Australian Raymond Smith in London and was eliminated just under a week after his unexpected victory against world-class Belgian Dimitri van den Bergh in the third round. Hempel was the favorite in the duel after victories over compatriot Martin Schindler and co-favorite van den Bergh, but was inferior to Smith from the start and thus missed the second German after Gabriel Clemens to reach the round of 16 at a World Cup.
Hempel – former handball goalkeeper in the second division – this time looked nervous, flawed and hit significantly fewer triple than in his two previous appearances, which he made surprisingly strong. He waved his hand dissatisfied early on, the first two sentences went relatively quickly to Smith, who before the World Championships in Alexandra Palace had not achieved any great success with the PDC World Federation. Even after that, Hempel missed many chances and had to give up the hard-fought legs again and again.
Missed help for Hopp
The 31-year-old from Cologne missed the chance to be the first German to win three games at a World Cup – Clemens did not succeed in this last year because he started with a bye. Hempel can still leave the British capital satisfied. In its first year it earned £ 49,000 and attracted attention with several successes. Before the two victories on the largest darts stage in the world, he had defeated ex-world champion Peter Wright from Scotland at the European Championships in October. He called the 3-1 win against van den Bergh “the biggest win of my career”.
While Smith had to deal with the winner of the game Steve Lennon (Ireland) against Mervyn King (England) in the round of 16 (from December 29th), Hempel also missed out on helping his compatriot Max Hopp. This could now lose the so-called tour card if the Australian Smith wins another game and displaces him from the necessary 64th place in the world rankings. The tour card entitles players to take part in important PDC tournaments.
Before Smith, Dirk van Duijvenbode from the Netherlands and the former English World Cup finalist Michael Smith had already bought tickets for the round of 16. James Wade gets a bye in round three because his opponent Vincent van der Voort from the Netherlands tested positive for the corona virus.