MARKHAM’S Gerwyn Price is among the invitees to next month’s World Series of Darts Finals, which are being held in Amsterdam.
Price, who won the competition on Dutch soil last year, will be one of 24 players competing between September 15 and September 17 – with £300,000 prize money up for grabs.
Price lifted the trophy last year after beating Dutchman Dirk van Duijvenbode 11-10 in a thrilling final.
He will be joined in the Netherlands by the likes of Michael van Gerwen, Michael Smith, Rob Cross, Dimitri van den Bergh, and Peter Wright.
Van Gerwen will be seeking a fifth World Series Finals title in front of an adoring home crowd.
Cross will be top seed, courtesy of back-to-back World Series event wins in Australia and New Zealand in August, while Bahrain Masters champion Smith will be third seed.
Nordic Masters winner Wright, Poland Masters runner-up Van den Bergh, New Zealand Masters runner-up Nathan Aspinall and world number six Luke Humphries will also be seeded.
In addition to the eight seeded players, a further eight players from the 2023 World Series of Darts Order of Merit have been invited to Amsterdam.
Dutch legend Raymond van Barneveld will compete in the event for the first time in four years, while former UK Open champion Danny Noppert will also compete on home soil.
Carmarthenshire’s Jonny Clayton, winner of the 2021 World Series Finals, is set to make his return to World Series action having withdrawn from the events in Australia and New Zealand due to personal reasons.
Jeff Smith, who enjoyed an unforgettable weekend in New York in June by winning the North American Championship and finishing runner-up in the US Darts Masters, will make his second World Series Finals appearance.
New South Wales Masters runner-up Damon Heta will be joined in the field by Australian stalwart Simon Whitlock and New Zealand talent Haupai Puha.
Krzysztof Ratajski, a semi-finalist in the 2021 event, completes the list of 16 invited players.
An additional eight players will come from the Tour Card Holder Qualifier in Barnsley on Wednesday September 6.
The tournament will be broadcast live on ITV4.
Meanwhile, the PDC has announced that Price is among 16 players who have automatically qualified for the Hungarian Darts Trophy, which is scheduled from September 22 to September 24.
Players in the top-16 of the PDC Pro Tour Order of Merit are automatically invited to the tournament and may even enter the event from the second round. Thus, Price, Van Gerwen, and reigning world champion Michael Smith among others, do not have to play a qualifying tournament. Price is seeded seventh for the tournament in Budapest.
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