2021 Grand Slam of Darts

Darts tournamentTemplate:SHORTDESC:Darts tournament
The **2021 Cazoo Grand Slam of Darts** was the fifteenth staging of the Grand Slam of Darts, organised by the Professional Darts Corporation. The event returned to the Aldersley Leisure Village, Wolverhampton, England, between 13–21 November 2021, after being held behind closed doors at the Ricoh Arena, Coventry in 2020.

José de Sousa was the defending champion, after defeating James Wade 16–12 in the 2020 final, but he was eliminated in the second round, losing 10–9 to Peter Wright.

Gerwyn Price won the tournament for the third time in four years, defeating Wright 16–8 in the final.

Due to the dissolution of the British Darts Organisation in 2020, there was no BDO/WDF representation for the first time in the event's history.

During her 5–0 victory over Mike De Decker in the group stage, Fallon Sherrock averaged 101.55, setting a new record for the highest televised average by a woman. She then went on to become the first woman to advance to the knockout stage, where she defeated Mensur Suljović in the second round, before losing to Wright in the quarter-finals.

Michael van Gerwen set a new Grand Slam record average of 115.19 during his 5–2 victory over Joe Cullen, surpassing the record set by Dimitri Van den Bergh the previous year.

## Prize money

The prize fund for the Grand Slam was the same as 2019 and 2020, with the winner receiving £125,000.

## Qualifying

The qualification criteria changed again for the 2021 tournament, as there were no Summer, Autumn or Winter Series events, as well as no Home Tour, and no events organized by the BDO, which dissolved in 2020. The addition of qualifiers from the PDC Challenge and Development Tours replaced BDO representation.

On 11 November, it was announced that Dimitri Van den Bergh had tested positive for COVID-19, ruling him out of the tournament. He was replaced by Chris Dobey, who was next on the list of qualifying criteria.

The qualifiers were:

### Qualifying Tournaments

Since the list of qualifiers from the main tournaments produced fewer than the required number of 16 players, the field was to be filled from the reserve lists. The first list consisted of the winners from 2021 European Tour events, with the winners ordered based on Order of Merit position at the cut-off date. However, Gerwyn Price, who had already qualified, won both European Tour events, and thus this list produced no new competitors.

Since there were still fewer than 16 qualifiers after the European Tour champions were included, the players with the most 2021 PDC Players Championship titles were added. Order of Merit position served as a tiebreaker.

### PDC Qualifying Event

A further eight places in the Grand Slam of Darts were filled by winners of a qualifying event on 5 November.

These were the qualifiers:

* Mike De Decker
* Gabriel Clemens
* Stephen Bunting
* Raymond van Barneveld
* Martin Schindler
* Ryan Joyce
* Krzysztof Ratajski
* Boris Krčmar

### Additional Qualifiers

The winners of these tournaments and tours also qualified for the tournament, in place of BDO/WDF representation.

1. ↑ Rafferty qualified as 2nd of the Development Tour Order of Merit, after Bradley Brooks was already qualified.
2. ↑ Ashton qualified as 2nd of the Women's Series 7–12 Order of Merit, after Fallon Sherrock was already qualified.

## Draw

The draw was made on 5 November, with the players split into 4 pools based on their current world ranking.

### Pools

One player from each non-seeded pool was drawn into a group with a seeded player. The players are listed with their world ranking at the time of the draw.

  Gerwyn Price  **(1)**
 Peter Wright  **(2)**
 Michael van Gerwen  **(3)**
 James Wade  **(4)**
 Chris Dobey  **(Alt)**
 Gary Anderson  **(6)**
 José de Sousa  **(7)**
 Jonny Clayton  **(8)**
 Rob Cross
 Krzysztof Ratajski
 Joe Cullen
 Stephen Bunting
 Mervyn King
 Gabriel Clemens
 Luke Humphries
 Ryan Joyce
 John Henderson
 Boris Krčmar
 Mike De Decker
 Martin Schindler
 Raymond van Barneveld
 Bradley Brooks
 Rowby-John Rodriguez
 Jim Williams
 Matt Campbell
 Joe Davis
 Nathan Rafferty
 Fallon Sherrock
 Rusty-Jake Rodriguez

1. ↑ Chris Dobey replaced Dimitri Van den Bergh, who was previously the Number 5 seed.
2. ↑ Rusty-Jake Rodriguez was not confirmed to qualify as the European Development Tour winner until after the group stage draw.

### Group stage

*All group matches are best of 9 legs.*

NB: P = Played; W = Won; L = Lost; LF = Legs for; LA = Legs against; +/− = Plus/minus record, in relation to legs; Pts = Points; Status = Qualified to knockout stage

### Knockout stage

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## References

1. ↑ History-maker De Sousa defeats Wade in BoyleSports Grand Slam final (24 November 2020).
2. ↑ Peerless Price completes Cazoo Grand Slam of Darts treble (21 November 2021).
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 2021 Cazoo Grand Slam of Darts qualification criteria confirmed (18 August 2021).
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Fallon Sherrock and Michael Van Gerwen set new record averages (14 November 2021).
5. ↑ PDC Order of Merit Rules. PDC.
6. ↑ Van den Bergh replaced by Dobey at Cazoo Grand Slam of Darts (11 November 2021).
7. ↑ Wright faces Sherrock - Cazoo Grand Slam of Darts Draw confirmed.
8. ↑ PDC Order of Merit.
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