The Wizard is Back! PL Darts Wk 10 Review

I’m tentative to write this article, because since I began Whitlock Watch a few weeks back, he has been playing rubbish. Then I stopped last week and he had incredible luck not to be eliminated and followed it up with a win today. Maybe reviews instead of previews will turn things around!

As already mentioned, the Wizard was very lucky that results went his way last week. Both Anderson and Newton were beaten when a draw could have put them above Whitlock. The Wizard was demolished by van Gerwen, who was always going to be tough to beat, but the disappointing thing was how poorly he played. His average was in the 70s early in the game.

So Whitlock got a reprieve and snuck through in 8th place. This morning he came up against Thornton, who had been throwing beautiful darts and beat Taylor last week.

It was a slow paced and scratchy start to the game and Simon looked the better player early, breaking to go up 2-1. His shaky darts of recent times then returned to him and he allowed Thornton to break straight back. The game lifted a notch from here; Thornton was hitting the treble with ease and didn’t look like missing a double, Whitlock looked his old brilliant self on the doubles but at first it was questionable as to whether he would be able to match the prolific scoring of Thornton. He could however, and for the first time in weeks Whitlock was able to pressure his opponent into making some uncharacteristic mistakes. He fired in 180s and his doubling was spot on. He never gave Thornton an inch and when the slip-ups came, Whitlock pounced. He raced away to win a high quality match 7-4.

There is still some tightening up to do for the Wizard in terms of his scoring if he wants to carry out a remarkable comeback in the Premier League, but the signs from today are positive. He is off the bottom at least!