2020 Grand Slam of Darts

Darts tournamentTemplate:SHORTDESC:Darts tournament
The **2020 BoyleSports Grand Slam of Darts** was the fourteenth staging of the Grand Slam of Darts, organised by the Professional Darts Corporation. The event took place, behind closed doors, from 16–24 November 2020 at the Ricoh Arena, Coventry.

The tournament's two-time defending champion was Gerwyn Price, who successfully defended his 2018 title by defeating Peter Wright 16–6 in the 2019 final, but Price's title defence came to an end when, after surviving a match dart from Ryan Joyce to progress through the group stage, he eventually lost 10–8 to Nathan Aspinall in the second round.

José de Sousa became the first Portuguese darts player to win a televised title by beating James Wade 16–12 in the final; de Sousa also became the first debutant since the tournament's inception to win the title, as well as the first to win the title without finishing top in the group phase.

Dimitri Van den Bergh broke the record for the highest individual average for this tournament when he beat Ricky Evans 5–1 in the group stage, averaging 114.85, beating Phil Taylor's previous record of 114.65 set in the 2014 tournament. Additionally, Simon Whitlock broke Adrian Lewis' record of hitting the most 180s in a Grand Slam match by scoring 20 maximums in his quarter-final victory over Michael van Gerwen.

## Prize money

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

## Qualifying

The qualification criteria were changed from 2019, with the number of entrants from the British Darts Organisation being reduced from eight to two, with a corresponding increase in PDC players. The winner of the 2020 PDC Home Tour was invited, as were the top players from the PDC's Summer, Autumn and Winter Series events and the winner of the new women's qualifier. The Champions League of Darts was not held in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The qualifiers were:

### PDC Qualifying Tournaments

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 The qualifiers for the Summer, Autumn and Winter Series were the highest-ranked players on the five day Order of Merit, who were not already qualified at that time.

At most twenty-two players could have qualified through this method, where the position in the list depicts the priority of the qualification.

Since the list of qualifiers from the main tournaments produced fewer than twenty-two players, the field of twenty-two players was filled from the reserve lists. The first list consisted of the winners from 2020 European Tour events, in which the winners were ordered by Order of Merit position order at the cut-off date.

Since there were still less than twenty-two qualified players after the winners of European Tour events were added, the winners of 2020 PDC Players Championship events were added, in Order of Merit order.

1. ↑ Ratajski qualified via the Grand Slam qualifier before the conclusion of the Players Championship events.
2. ↑ Joyce qualified via the Grand Slam qualifier before the conclusion of the Players Championship events.

### PDC Qualifying Event

A further eight places in the Grand Slam of Darts were filled by qualifiers from a PDC qualifier on 9 November.

These were the qualifiers:

* Ricky Evans
* Adam Hunt
* Krzysztof Ratajski
* Ryan Joyce
* Dave Chisnall
* Simon Whitlock
* Justin Pipe
* Gabriel Clemens

### BDO Invitees

The two BDO world champions were invited.

## Draw

### Pools

  Michael van Gerwen  **(1)**
 Peter Wright  **(2)**
 Gerwyn Price  **(3)**
 Michael Smith  **(4)**
 Rob Cross  **(5)**
 Nathan Aspinall  **(6)**
 James Wade  **(7)**
 Gary Anderson  **(8)**
 Dimitri Van den Bergh
 Ian White
 Glen Durrant
 Krzysztof Ratajski
 Jonny Clayton
 Joe Cullen
 Simon Whitlock
 Ricky Evans
 Gabriel Clemens
 Devon Petersen
 José de Sousa
 Luke Humphries
 Ryan Joyce
 Ryan Searle
 Justin Pipe
 Damon Heta
 Adam Hunt
 Lisa Ashton
 Adam Gawlas
 Wayne Warren  (BDO)
 Mikuru Suzuki  (BDO)

### 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

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Ricoh Arena to host three further TV events & Winter Series. Professional Darts Corporation. Retrieved on September 30, 2020.
2. ↑ Peerless Price retains BoyleSports Grand Slam title. *pdc.tv* (17 November 2018). Retrieved on November 17, 2019.
3. ↑ History-maker De Sousa defeats Wade in BoyleSports Grand Slam final (24 November 2020). Retrieved on November 24, 2020.
4. ↑ Simon Whitlock beats Michael van Gerwen in Grand Slam of Darts (23 November 2020).
5. ↑ PDC Order of Merit Rules. PDC. Retrieved on January 15, 2019.
6. ↑ 2020 Grand Slam qualification criteria confirmed. Professional Darts Corporation. Retrieved on August 18, 2020.