PDC stats analyst Christopher Kempf assesses the race to top the Unibet Premier League table.
In most previous editions of the Unibet Premier League, there was very little doubt as to who would finish at the top of the table, and the only open question was which player stood the best chance of a semi-final or final upset to prevent the leading player from taking another Premier League title.
That is not so anymore; headed into the second phase of this year's tournament, two players are tied for the lead of the group table, and neither is named Phil Taylor or Michael van Gerwen.
In fact, neither had yet been born when six-time Premier League champion Taylor won his first World Championship title in 1990.
Between Nathan Aspinall and Dimitri Van den Bergh and their rivals in the second phase, nearly every player leads the field in one particular skill, while trailing another player in other facets of the game.
This has made for an uncertain and difficult-to-forecast tournament; no player is dominant in enough aspects of the game of 501 to dominate in the way that Taylor or Van Gerwen once did.
There is no better measure of a player's fundamentals than the probability of that player hitting a treble 20 with their first dart, with no assistance from markers in the board or the rhythm of previous throws.
A superior performance in this respect is one of the major contributors to the 100.99 average in the Premier League thus far of Jonny Clayton, who has struck a treble 20 163 times immediately after stepping to the oche.
This represents 43.8% of all his attempts; given that players generally have much better results with their second and third darts at treble 20 than with their first, and that the ProTour average on T20 with all darts is only 37%, Clayton's accuracy with the first dart demonstrates an impressive maturation of his talent.
Compare that percentage also with that of Van Gerwen, who has the lowest first-dart accuracy of the eight remaining players (32.7%) going into the second half of the season.
With 57 visits of 171-180 in nine matches thus far in the Premier League, Jose de Sousa is on track to smash all previous records of three-treble visits, both in terms of absolute numbers and as a rate per leg.
Taylor's record of 0.448 per leg has stood since 2012, but even should his output of 171s, 174s, 177s and 180s slow off slightly, the mercurial Portuguese player will set a much more daunting record.
Seemingly from out of nowhere, De Sousa has emerged as the most powerful and reliable scorer on television - he is churning out 180s at double the rate of the average ProTour player - and has landed two of the five televised nine-dart finishes in the past 12 months.
James Wade is once again challenging for a TV title in the way he knows best - by taking out the combination checkouts, hitting double ten and winning legs with a last-dart checkout.
Even had he not been on a career-best streak of four consecutive 100+ TV averages, he would still be competitive on the back of completing 63.4% of his two-dart combination checkouts and 48.6% of his doubles.
Under pressure, Wade is even more ruthless; including bullseyes, his accuracy with last dart in hand and with his opponent waiting on a double is actually higher than it would have been otherwise.
Thus Wade makes up for his lower output of high scores and big trebles by completing checkouts that most players would not have the nerve, or experience, to finish.
Aspinall's doubles talent is not as well known as Wade's, but it is equally impressive, though differently exhibited.
In recent years he has been one of the PDC's leading players when given three darts at a double, but in this year's Premier League he has had perfection nearly within his grasp.
With only two failures to check out in a total of 34 three-darts-at-double attempts so far, he could become the first known player to complete 95% of those finishes over a 200-leg span.
Of those 32 successful attempts, moreover, a majority saw the Stockport man complete the checkout with only one dart thrown, an unusually clinical display even for an elite professional darter.
Confounding the expectations of many observers has been Premier League debutant Van den Bergh, whose assured performance on TV belied the fact that until last week he had never won a ProTour event.
For every six chances Van den Bergh has had to complete a leg in 12 darts or fewer, the World Matchplay champion has completed one - putting him well ahead of the one-in-nine or -ten put forward by Clayton, Aspinall and De Sousa.
Thus his opponents know that between 10-15% of legs in a given match against the Belgian will be essentially unwinnable.
Even if his opponent manages to throw a 180, Van den Bergh leads the Premier League field with an average score of 114.48 in response to an opponent's maximum, and with a league-leading 45.5% accuracy on cover shots, setting a high bar for a player so inexperienced in marathon Premier League campaigns.
Who is to say whether Wade's doubles finesse, De Sousa's power scoring or Clayton's pinpoint accuracy will be the key to the Premier League second phase? Where one player is strong, he tends to be weaker in the others.
If we are not going to see the dominance of Taylor/Van Gerwen and their repeated 110+ averages (circa 2012 or 2016) again, we can at least look forward to players doing battle in tightly-contested matches and comparing the efficacy of their respective superpowers.
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The Unibet Premier League is broadcast through Sky Sports in the UK and Ireland, RTL7 in the Netherlands, DAZN in various worldwide territories including Germany & America, as well as through the PDC's global broadcast partners and on PDCTV for Rest of the World Subscribers outside of the UK, Ireland & Netherlands.
2021 Unibet Premier League
Night 10 - Wednesday May 5
Jonny Clayton v James Wade
Jose de Sousa v Gary Anderson
Dimitri Van den Bergh v Michael van Gerwen
Peter Wright v Nathan Aspinall