Dutch darts star records highly unusual nine-darter and drops the most casual reaction ever

The nine-darter is the darts equivalent of a hole-in-one in golf or a 147 maximum break in snooker. In short, it's not easy.

Darts and snooker fans like to debate the relative difficulty of their sports' perfect game but while the World Snooker Championship concluded on Monday without adding to the Crucible's 15 maximum breaks, the Players Championship 13 event served up a blistering nine-darter.

The big moment came in the fourth leg of Dirk van Duijvenbode's round of 128 match against Madars Razma in Hildesheim during Monday's Players Championship proceedings.

With Latvia's Razma leading Van Duijvenbode by two legs to one, the Dutchman rattled off a 177, 180 and a 144 finish to level up the scores with just nine darts, the third of which he initially dropped on the oche.

To say both Van Duijvenbode and his opponent no-sold the achievement would be an understatement. A single celebratory point of the index finger was enough for the 33-year-old, who went on to win 6-3 before England's Tyler Thorpe defeated him 6-4 in the next round.

'The Aubergenius' has held a PDC Tour Card since 2016 and climbed one place to 27th in the PDC World Rankings after beating Razma in northern Germany.

He has picked up six Players Championship wins since 2021 but hasn't reached the last four since he was beaten by Chris Dobey in the final of Players Championship 17 in Leicester last year.

Van Duijvenbode's compatriot Kevin Doets, ranked 35th in the world, emerged as Monday's winner, beating Luke Woodhouse 8-5 in the final.

How rare is the nine-darter?

The nine-dart finish, so-called because it's the minimum number of darts that can reach the target of 501 to win a leg, is incredibly rare.

Only 110 have ever occurred in televised matches, with world number two Luke Humphries, Gian van Geen, Josh Rock and Danny Noppert all hitting 180-180-141 nine-darters since the beginning of 2026.

Humphries now has three televised nine-darters, two fewer than world number one Luke Littler and eight fewer than Phil Taylor, who tops the nine-darter charts with 11.

Just 16 nine-dart finishes have ever been achieved in the PDC World Championship but they are becoming more and more common.