This evening Scott ‘Cool Hand’ Rand suffered a crushing 4-0 defeat to the hands of ‘Fleetwood Warrior’ Wes Newton.
In round one the 37-year-old former lorry driver beat his stablemate from Belgium Kim Huybrechts in the fifth set decider of this high energy first rounder but today he found the world number 6 just too hot to handle as the Lancastrian finished with a 99.53 average along with registering five maximums and three 100+ finishes.
Rand who qualified for the two week event by finishing 37th on the 2012 ProTour Order of Merit assessed his season by saying: “It’s been a bad season. I was in a car crash in January where I hurt my elbow quite a lot. It’s taken me about two months ago to start throwing with no pain again but now I am it’s feeling very very good.”
Rand burst into the PDC big time with his fantastic performance at last year’s Cash Converters Players Championship in Doncaster in front of a million ITV4 viewers when he was beaten in the final by Rugby-based Kevin Painter: “They like what they saw, they like the entertainment, that’s why I give it much as I can.”
When asked about his thoughts on the Coventry darts scene as it now looks, Rand definitely reckons it is in great shape full of high-quality players: “There is strength and depth in Coventry. If I look at all the cities in the Midlands Coventry is the one that has the highest quality of darts.
“I practise with three or four players who are worthy of playing on the tour, a couple of them have got tour cards and going to Q-school and expect them to get tour cards so I am going to be in good company.”
Pictures copyright and courtesy of “Lawrence Lustig/PDC”