NOPP THE RESULT WANTED
04/02/2025 By Aaron Nijjar
By Aaron Nijjar
DEJECTED Danny Noppert has called out his “scandalous” World Masters loss to Luke Humphries.
The Dutch star was left hugely frustrated by his late lack of power against Cool Hand in their last-four meeting in Milton Keynes.
Noppert performed superbly to reach the semi-finals and surged 2-0 ahead of Humphries before hitting a brick wall.
The World No.1 reeled off five-straight sets to make the Final where he defeated Jonny Clayton to lift the trophy.
Noppert felt flattened by the manner of his 5-2 beating and, speaking to Sportnieuws.nl, he admitted: “I had no power at all, it was just nowhere to be found. Scandalous.
“If you look at the first two sets, I was the boss and then you suddenly completely crash. It was a long day, too long a day, that breaks me every time.
“There is something missing in my sharpness. Of course, he [Humphries] is the number one in the world, you just have to accept that. Then you have to be satisfied with a semi-final, but actually I know I can do better.
“I’m certainly not disappointed because beforehand I would have signed for a semi-final. But now it hurts a bit. I know what it is. At the end I just wasn’t sharp. After the first break there was nothing more, real amateur level at that moment. But, anyway, I still made it to the semi-final, I’m happy with that.”
Image by Taylor Lanning.
