Humphries won the first set against Clemens despite averaging just 89.82, but was more purposeful in going 2-0 up with a second-set average of 108.59. <\/p>\n
He also claimed the third set but the signs of Clemens sparking into life were there. <\/p>\n
The German reached the semi-finals in 2023 but had failed to progress past round three in the past two years. <\/p>\n
He won the fourth set without dropping a leg, and took out 121 and 116 finishes.<\/p>\n
Clemens also claimed set five and at this stage he was on a roll, winning eight of 11 legs across sets three to five.<\/p>\n
This was not a case of Humphries’ level dropping – he took out 170 in set five and averaged 103.25 and 110.25 in the two that Clemens won. <\/p>\n
Clemens had three darts at double 20 to earn a deciding set but went inside on 20 and 10 before going high on the double five. <\/p>\n
Humphries needed 81 to secure his passage and, after nailing double 13 with his final dart, wheeled off in celebration and jumped around the stage fist-pumping in a rare showing of emotion and relief for the world number two. <\/p>\n
“I don’t think I really dropped off but Gabriel got a lot better,” Humphries, who averaged 100.14 to Clemens’ 101.49, told Sky Sports.<\/p>\n
“If that double 13 doesn’t go in, it is 3-3 and I’m panicking. <\/p>\n
“That could be the difference between being world champion again or not. <\/p>\n
“I just found another level there when I needed it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Humphries won the first set against Clemens despite averaging just 89.82, but was more purposeful in going 2-0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340512,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-340511","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}