WADE STAYS COOL TO DUMP DOBEY
15/11/2023 By Phil Lanning
JAMES WADE kept his cool to book a place in the Grand Slam quarter-finals after missing EIGHT match darts.
The Aldershot hotshot stumbled over the finishing line to beat Chris Dobey 10-8 in Wolverhampton.
Wade, 40, survived a jittery finale and will now face Northern Irish hot prospect Josh Rock in the last eight.
He said: “I left so many opportunities for myself and I didn’t get it wrapped up. Luckily Chris missed a silly amount of shots. We want to win a little too much at times.
“At 9-5 up I thought this is easy. Then all of a sudden I started to think. It wasn’t very good. Chris should have pushed to the last leg and would have won.
“Darts is like a bit of an illness when you’ve been playing for 25 years. You just keep coming back, I like punishment I think.
“I’ll be back in the top 10. Everyone else worry about themselves and I’ll worry about myself and I will be.”
Rock is through to his first major quarter-final having waited a year to win on TV after easing past Krzysztof Ratajski 10-5.
He said: “I think the celebration showed how much it meant. I should have won it with a 10-darter but it didn’t work out.
“I was thinking about it when I shouldn’t have been thinking about it. I’ve finally broken the deadlock with my first quarter-final.
“I was thinking about my dad and I hit the double five straight away.
“It was hard enough in the first game against Chris Dobey in the group stage. But I showed I could still play this game of darts.”
Images by Taylor Lanning.
