James Wade became the first ranked player to be eliminated from the World Darts Championship after defeating Jermaine Utimena in the second round at Alexandra Palace.
Wade, a four-time World Cup semi-finalist, was seen as a strong contender for the Sid Waddell Trophy but lost his opening match for the third year in a row.
The Englishman won the opening match by 13 shots, only for Vattimena to take control of the one-sided contest, winning the next eight legs to move two sets and into a break at the 16th seed.
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Jermaine Wattimena fired 126 cashes en route to an impressive victory over James Wade.
Wade briefly halted Vatimena’s run, taking out the tops with 15 balls to spare, only for the Dutchman to finish inside 20 and leave him facing either compatriot Wesley Plaisier or two-time world champion Peter Wright after Christmas.
More to follow…
What else happened on Monday afternoon?
Playier came back from sets twice to defeat Ryusei Azemoto in a low-scoring contest where both players struggled with their averages and finishing. The first maximum came in the fourth set before Pleisier improved in the later stages of a lengthy encounter, hitting six consecutive legs to seal victory.
Luke Woodhouse Won each of the first seven legs en route to a straight sets victory over Lawrence Ilagan, averaging 94.38 and hitting four maximums to set up a clash against World Grand Prix champion Mike De Decker.
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There are shouts everywhere for Luke Woodhouse as he ditches the bull for the big fish.
Kai Gotthard overcame a broken dart barrel and going down a set to beat Alan Soutar 3-1 on his World Championship debut and the German will now face Stephen Bunting in the next round.
Gotthard had to leave the stage to rectify the problem in the opening set, which Southar won, before capitalizing on the Scot’s unerring finish to win eight of the next legs en route to an impressive victory.
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Kai Gotthard saw the barrel of his arrow hit in a freak incident at the start of his first round clash.
What’s next?
We’ve got another day for you on Tuesday 17th December and you can watch it live on Sky Sports Darts.
From 12.30 we have James Hurrell v Jim Long, Kevin Deutz v Noah-Lynn van Leeuwen, Ryan Joyce v Darius Labanauskas and World Grand Prix Champion Mike De Decker v Luke Woodhouse.
Then starting at 7 p.m., we have Jeffrey de Graaf vs. Rashad Sweeting, Ricardo Pietrzko vs. Xiaochen Zong, Ryan Meikle playing Fallon Cherokee with a chance to face Luke Littler on the line, and Peter Wright vs. Wesley Plaisier.
Who will win the Paddy Power World Darts Championship Watch every match exclusively live from December 15 to January 3 on Sky Sports’ special Darts channel. Stream darts and better sports with NOW!.
