Michael van Gerwen is looking for further glory after making it three consecutive Premier League darts wins with a 6-4 victory over Nathan Aspinall. The Dutchman beat Gwen Price and teenager Luke Littler to book his place in the final, with the seven-time premiership champion coming from behind to beat Aspinall.
Aspinall started well, winning two games in a row, but unfortunately missed the double which troubled him all night, with Van Gerwen leading 5-2 in a 10-dart break.
Although Van Gerwen needed a single round to win, Aspinall fought back hard in the 10th round and almost took him to the decider, but missed the double 16. The Dutch had no problem finding the double 18 to seal the victory and hoped to take themselves to the double 18. Maintain a comfortable position for the next few weeks.
He told the post-match press conference: “I think it was of course really important to win another Premier League night in the third game, which was difficult. “I thought I had a tough draw tonight, first of all Beating Gates and then Luke Littler and then of course Nathan Aspinall in the final, it’s not easy but of course you still have to do it. And then to actually achieve it is always a A great feeling.
“Of course you want to be as comfortable as possible but I think with this win I can look forward to next week but that’s what I want to do. I want to make sure I’m in a comfortable position and make sure I do some damage again and It’s the only thing I can do to make sure I get more points.”
After defeating Price in the quarter-finals, Van Gerwen defeated Littler 6-5 in the semi-finals to advance to the final. The teenager beat Peter Wright 6-5 in the quarter-finals in a close match to advance to the last four against world number two Littler Pressure was exerted.
Van Gerwen missed six match darts to send the ‘Nuclear Bomb’ into the decider, but the Dutchman kept his cool in the final leg to score 90 to win. He now leads the championship by eight points and believes his mentality is different this year.
“When you play against the best players, you have to play your best game, you have to perform well, you have to win,” he added. “Of course you’re going to have bad days and you’re going to have good days over the next few weeks, but overall you need to make sure you keep your motivation up and that’s what I’m doing right now.
“I think I have a different mentality now and I’m going to look at it week by week and not put myself in the same position I was last year. It was another week last year where I wasn’t in a good mental state and I changed that this year.”
Thursday marked Aspinall’s first Premier League final since beating Rob Cross in the semi-finals. After narrowly defeating Michael Smith 6-5 in the quarter-finals, Asp faced a tough test against Kroos, with a doubles fumble allowing “Voltage” to get back into the game. His struggles on the outside resulted in him missing three match darts, before Cross missed a double six and Aspinall made no mistake with the following dart to end the match.
