“I’m just here to cause a headache,” Gary Anderson had told everyone in advance of this game, and for the great Michael van Gerwen the hangover from this crushing 4-1 defeat will comfortably outstrip any quantity of New Year’s Eve festivity. It was a little nervy at the end, a little scrappy and short of breath. But somehow the result had never really been in doubt from the early stages: Van Gerwen, the three-time champion, was simply outplayed by a man almost two decades his senior, a true darting maestro enjoying an uproarious final act to his career.
In reaching the quarter-finals of this tournament for the first time since 2022, Anderson has finally made good on a renaissance that has been at least a couple of years in the making. As the halcyon days of his career began to recede in a haze of domestic bliss, tournaments missed and general middle-aged apathy, it became common to speak of Anderson’s greatness in the past tense. The big prizes and bright lights no longer seemed to motivate him, and so it was hard to glimpse what actually did.
