While Littler cruised through, there was no such luck for Van Veen as he beat his idol Anderson in a remarkable match.<\/p>\n
It began with the Scot winning the first set against the darts with a 104 average, but any thoughts that Van Veen, 23, might be overawed in his first world semi-final were quickly forgotten as he hit a 10-darter to start the second set.<\/p>\n
A stunning average of 113.35 saw him level it at 1-1 with a 117 checkout and was a taster of what was to come in the sets that followed.<\/p>\n
Anderson started the next with a 144 checkout but Van Veen hit back once more, hitting six perfect darts to start the deciding leg on his way to an 11-darter.<\/p>\n
Somehow, the fifth set took the match to another level again. First, Anderson broke with a 10-darter and hit a 170 checkout to go 2-0 in legs, and a leg from making it 3-2.<\/p>\n
Instead, Van Veen made it 4-1 after a 170 checkout of his own forced a deciding leg. He won it and averaged 111.46, while Anderson was left wondering how he had lost a set in which he averaged 117.44.<\/p>\n
The 55-year-old’s resilience shone through, though, and with the crowd behind him, he won the next two sets to make it 4-3 and pile the pressure on his younger opponent – who had missed four darts to make it 5-2.<\/p>\n
But while both players showed signs that the unrelenting nature of the contest was taking its toll, Van Veen held firm, got himself 5-3 up and then finished strongly with a 13-darter to clinch his place in the final.<\/p>\n
“To be in the World Championship final is not even a dream coming true because I wasn’t able to dream about this,” Van Veen, who had not won a match at the World Championship prior to this event, told Sky Sports.<\/p>\n
“Now it’s happened and I’m so happy.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While Littler cruised through, there was no such luck for Van Veen as he beat his idol Anderson…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":669955,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[748,393,4884,12,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-670420","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-northern-ireland","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115829275586717654","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/669955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}