Michael van Gerwen beat Gian van Veen 8-6 in a thrilling all-Dutch final to win the Bahrain Masters title.<\/p>\n
Three-time world champion Van Gerwen, leapfrogged in the rankings by world championship runner-up Van Veen earlier this month, let slip 3-0 and 6-2 leads before edging an enthralling contest to lift the trophy for the first time.<\/p>\n
World number one Luke Littler was knocked out earlier on finals day at the Exhibition World Bahrain after a comprehensive 6-2 quarter-final defeat to Gerwyn Price.<\/p>\n
Van Gerwen produced 130-checkout on the bull to pounce on Van Veen’s missed double and secure an early break in the final before his second 100-plus checkout sealed him a 3-0 lead.<\/p>\n
Van Veen hit back with a break and then a 111-finish to reduce the deficit to 3-2, but Van Gerwen went on to average over 107 as he opened up a four-leg advantage to lead 6-2.<\/p>\n
In a tense see-saw battle, Van Veen responded again by taking three consecutive legs to pull it back to 6-5 and then 7-6.<\/p>\n
But Van Gerwen, who had made a 103-checkout to edge 7-5 ahead, held his nerve to win the decisive 14th leg and land his 17th World Series title and first since 2024.<\/p>\n
Littler, crowned world champion for a second time earlier this month, saw his 21-match unbeaten run halted by world number 12 Price, who went on to lose 7-2 to Van Gerwen in the semi-finals.<\/p>\n
Van Gerwen ousted defending champion Stephen Bunting with a 6-4 win in the last eight, while world number two Luke Humphries was also knocked out in the quarter-finals, losing 6-3 to Nathan Aspinall.<\/p>\n
World number two Humphries had led 3-1 before losing 6-3 to Aspinall, who went down 7-4 to Van Veen in the last four.<\/p>\n
A power failure briefly halted play earlier on Friday evening before Van Veen sealed his place in the last four by averaging over 104 in a convincing 6-1 win against fellow countryman Danny Noppert.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael van Gerwen beat Gian van Veen 8-6 in a thrilling all-Dutch final to win the Bahrain Masters…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-248479","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248479","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=248479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}