Sponsored by Tempus the International Darts League is being played from May 8 to 16 2004 in The Silverdome in Zoetermeer (pictured right). The tournament is awarded by the British Darts Organisation (BDO) as one of the four grand slams, beside the Lakeside, World Professional Darts Championship, the Winmau World Masters and the Bavaria World Darts Trophy.

The Tempus International Darts League has a very strong field of participators. The complete top of the 32 BDO players will start. Besides the Lakeside 2004 winner Andy Fordham and title defender Raymond van Barneveld, along with Mervyn King, Ted Hankey, Tony West, Tony David, Tony O’Shea, John Walton, Gary Anderson, Martin Adams and the Dutch players like Co Stompé and Vincent van der Voort will make for a great event.

As a top-rated tournament, it is appropriate that the Tempus International Darts League will be played in Championship style, with an opening eight groups of four players each competing in Round Robin style over the best of 11 Leg matches. Following the initial Round Robin the two best players in each group will go forward to a new Round Robin series. This time there will be four groups of four players. Matches will be best of 13 legs. The best two players in each group will go forward to the quarterfinals, which will be the traditional knockout cup system.

QUARTER FINALS: Best of 7 Sets.
SEMI FINALS: Best of 11 sets.
FINAL: Best of 15 Sets.
All Sets will be best of 5 legs

Tony David blew his chances against New Zealand’s Peter Hunt in round one. David could have easily been up 5 – 0 early in the match after winning the first two legs. Leg three saw David miss a shot at the double, which Hunt immediately cleaned up to bring the match back to 2 – 1 to David. The next leg saw David hitting the big scores and pegging 124 to lead 3-1. Leg five was the turning point in this match. David scored 60,100,100,100 and missed a 141 chance but left 11. Hunt in the mean time was back in the leg after hitting a 180 with his fourth throw. With his 18th dart he pegged 82 to be back in the match. Leg six had David leading off, but the missed opportunity in the previous leg seemed to cause him to lose concentration and his scoring went off in this and the seventh leg. This gave Hunt the lead 4 – 3 but David regrouped. He again found his scoring power to win the next leg in 13-darts to square the match at
4 – 4. Again a missed opportunity in leg 9 with David repeating leg five. The tenth leg saw Hunt take the match 6 – 4 when David again blew his chances on the double to take this leg. David plays Shaun Greatbatch next

Steve Duke who usually prepares so well for these tournaments and plays brilliantly early was white washed by a very much inform James Wade 6 – 0. Duke who defeated Mervyn King first up last year could not match the young English International. Duke will have to defeat England’s Gary Robson strongly, and take every chance against Raymond Barneveld in his final round robin match to have any chance to progress to the next round.

Day 1 Results

Saturday 8th May 2004: Opening Round Robin Groups. Afternoon Session