Luke Humphries labelled Dimitri Van den Bergh “incredibly slow” as fans also got in the Belgian ace back in Minehead

Luke Humphries labelled Dimitri Van den Bergh “incredibly slow” as fans also got in the Belgian ace back in Minehead

After losing in the UK Open final, Luke Humphries described Dimitri van den Bergh as “incredibly slow”.

Van den Bergh won his second major championship on Sunday night, despite missing six match darts. He held off a comeback from defending world champion Luke Humphries, who had trailed 4-1, 7-2, and eventually 10-8.

But after Humphries tied it at 8-8, Van den Bergh took an age to begin the 19th leg. The Belgian appeared to be taking longer than normal to settle himself, infuriating the crowd at Butlin’s Minehead before going on to win the final two legs.

Humphries was left standing awkwardly, waiting for The Dreammaker to throw as the booing persisted. And Cool Hand Luke emphasised how his opponent’s “incredibly slow” strategy threw him off, but said it did not rub him the wrong way.

Humphries said  “No, I wasn’t angry with him but I’m used to Dimitri being quite a flowy player and he’s quite a good pace to play against. Whereas, he’s completely different now, he’s probably one of the toughest players to play with because he’s incredibly slow.

“When someone changes their whole style, you’re used to one game from them and then it’s completely different. Yeah, it was quite tough to follow the rhythm but that wasn’t the reason I didn’t play so good.

“You’ve got to give him credit, the crowd were on his back. I tried to stop them from booing and whistling because obviously no one likes it. But the crowd made their minds up.

“I thought when he slowed everything down at 10-8 up it wasn’t a good thing to do because the crowd get on your back there.”