Whitlock Hammers Hamilton, Stays in the Hunt

Keeping our mouth firmly shut here at TC Ink before Whitlock’s matches is working wonders for the Wizard, as he breezed past Andy Hamilton this morning.

The mental scars from past boil overs against the Hammer seem to have healed. Whitlock once again had a very slow start, there were worrying signs when he missed 6 consecutive darts at a double in the third leg, resulting in Hamilton breaking him. At this point he was averaging below 80. But this, along with a motivational tweet from yours truly, sparked the Wizard into action, his darts started to find their mark and he won the next 4 legs on the trot to go up 5-2. From here he only dropped one more leg and took out a convincing 7-3 victory in front of the huge, 10,000 person crowd in Dublin. Whitlock finished with an average of 95.4, again, you take out the poor start and that is a top draw performance.

The Wizard now sits 3 points out of the top 4. He is on 10, Phil Taylor is 4th on 13, Whitlock also has a game in hand. Next week is do or die, he has two very difficult matches. First he will take on 1st placed van Gerwen and then, the Power himself, Phil Taylor. If he can manage some upset victories he will be right in the mix for a finals spot, it will be a very tough task though. It will be crucial to get off to a good start against these two, I feel that if he falls behind they won’t let him back in like Hamilton did today and Thornton last week. However, MVG may just be a little complacent given his large buffer at the top of the table. Taylor will be the opposite, after a few losses he will be fully focussed.