{"id":202766,"date":"2025-12-21T01:05:06","date_gmt":"2025-12-21T01:05:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/202766\/"},"modified":"2025-12-21T01:05:06","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T01:05:06","slug":"smith-among-big-guns-to-fall-in-ally-pally-carnage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/202766\/","title":{"rendered":"Smith among big guns to fall in Ally Pally carnage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former world champion and world number one Michael Smith led the high-profile casualties on a day of shocks at the PDC World Championships.<\/p>\n

Smith lost 3-1 to Dutchman Niels Zonneveld to join fellow seeds Chris Dobey, Dave Chisnall and Dirk van Duijvenbode on the Alexandra Palace scrapheap.<\/p>\n

The 2023 champion missed a dart at double top for the third set, with Zonneveld clinching it with double 10 to move ahead.<\/p>\n

Smith then went for a showbiz 170 finish with Zonneveld a long way back, but after he missed, the 27-year-old from Uitgeest hit 180 and a 77 checkout to break for 2-0 in the fourth before completing the job in the next leg.<\/p>\n

“It means the world,” Zonneveld, who will meet fifth seed Johnny Clayton in round three, said on Sky Sports.<\/p>\n

“I dreamed about this as a boy and now it came true. I’ve survived until Christmas and it’s such a good feeling.”<\/p>\n

Dobey, the eighth seed, was beaten by an inspired performance from 55-year-old Andrew Gilding, who averaged 99.01 and hit a 10-dart leg in a 3-1 victory.<\/p>\n

“How do I feel? Amazing,” said Gilding. “I don’t know what happened. I felt really bad in practice, but that’s usually a good sign.”<\/p>\n

Chisnall was dumped out by German Ricardo Pietreczko despite hitting 11 maximums.<\/p>\n

The number 21 seed paid the price for double trouble and missed a match dart in the final set when it seemed as though he would complete a remarkable recovery.<\/p>\n

James Hurrell claimed one of the biggest wins of his career by upsetting 29th seed Van Duijvenbode 3-2.<\/p>\n

Hurrell missed two match darts for a final-set whitewash, but he held his nerve to win the next leg and will next meet fourth seed Stephen Bunting.<\/p>\n

Popular Merseysider Bunting avoided the carnage with a routine 3-0 win over India’s Nitin Kumar.<\/p>\n

\"Motomu
\nIt wasn’t to be for Motomu Sakai<\/p>\n

Crowd favourite Motomu Sakai bowed out with his conqueror Andreas Harrysson admitting that he had been worried by the Japanese’s exuberant walk-on.<\/p>\n

Sakai has become a cult hero this week, with fans warming to his energetic dance moves and signing autographs en route to the stage.<\/p>\n

The 28-year-old qualifier won his opening match against Thibault Tricole 3-0, but went down by the same scoreline to Sweden’s Harrysson as the second-round action got under way.<\/p>\n

“I was a bit worried seeing his walk-on,” Harrysson said after following up his first-round win over 12th seed Ross Smith.<\/p>\n

“But I think I managed it quite OK. I think he wasn’t as he was in the first game on the stage.<\/p>\n

“It’s a great feeling. I didn’t play my best, but nor did he. It was a great win.”<\/p>\n

Ryan Searle averaged over 98 in an impressive straight-sets win over Co Fermanagh’s Brendan Dolan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former world champion and world number one Michael Smith led the high-profile casualties on a day of shocks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202767,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-202766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}