The 2025 World Darts Championships is underway at the Alexandra Palace in London as 96 players from around the globe descend on the English capital aiming to win the Sid Waddell Trophy on Friday January 3rd.
On Sunday night, the opening night of the tournament, Meath's Keane Barry advanced to the second round beating Kim Huybrechts in impressive fashion. Barry will face former world champion Gerwyn Price tonight.
Reigning world champion Luke Humphries was also in action on the opening night, easing to a 3-0 set victory over France's Thibault Tricole.
Today saw the opening afternoon session and in typical darts fashion it wasn't without incident.
Scotland's Alan Soutar was taking on Germany's Kai Gotthardt in their first round encounter on the Ally Pally stage when a bizarre turn of events unfolded.
With Soutar, who is ranked 50th in the world, 2-1 up in the opening set, one of Gotthardt's darts snapped in half.
Players typically have spare barrells on stage with them so they can easily replace them if an event like this occurs but Gotthardt didn't on this occasion. He walked over to referee George Noble and after brief consultation walked off stage to get a new barrell.
Well you don't see that every day...
Kai Gotthardt has snapped one of his darts in half 😅😬 pic.twitter.com/uiSjRAHBie— PDC Darts (@OfficialPDC) December 16, 2024
Soutar was left standing idle, doing his best to entertain the crowd who were becoming impatient due to the delay in proceedings. When Gotthardt eventually returned on stage after about five minutes, the game resumed mid-leg.
The break in momentum clearly didn't affect the German who would go onto win the clash 3-1 on his World Championship debut setting up a second round encounter against Stephen Bunting on Friday afternoon.
Earlier in the session Dutchman Wesley Plaisier defeated Ryusei Azemoto 3-2 on debut, while England's Luke Woodhouse cruised to victory against Philippines player Lourence Ilagan 3-0.
SEE ALSO: 10 Players To Watch Out For At The PDC World Darts Championship
