{"id":11956,"date":"2026-04-23T07:29:06","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T00:29:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/?p=11956"},"modified":"2026-04-23T07:29:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T00:29:08","slug":"clayton-looks-to-extend-lead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/clayton-looks-to-extend-lead\/","title":{"rendered":"Clayton looks to extend lead"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Jonny Clayton hopes to reinforce his position at the summit of the Premier League standings as the darting roadshow arrives in Liverpool tonight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Night Twelve of the tournament takes place at the Liverpool Arena, with Clayton pitted against home favourite Stephen Bunting as he looks to extend his five-point lead at the top of the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Welsh number one has had a staggering campaign, claiming four nightly wins from 11 weeks, including back-to-back triumphs in Brighton and then Rotterdam last week.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The 2021 Premier League champion has won two of his three matches against Bunting in this year&#8217;s Premier League, and despite being all but certain to qualify for Finals Night in May, has not satiated his hunger for nightly wins just yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re all out to win nights and get points, so two nightly wins on the trot is great &#8211; it puts a smile on my face,&#8221; said Clayton, who holds a 16-point buffer on fifth-placed Luke Humphries.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t give up. I&#8217;ve been behind a few times and still came through and won.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Twenty-nine points is a good score to be on. Hopefully it&#8217;s enough for the Play-Offs and I&#8217;m there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve got five weeks left and hopefully I can win five of them!&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Clayton&#8217;s World Cup partner Price has also had a fruitful Premier League campaign to date, sitting in third after scooping a brace of nightly wins in Antwerp and Manchester.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The 41-year-old recently picked up his tenth European Tour title and second ranking title of the year at last weekend&#8217;s European Darts Grand Prix, and&nbsp;enters Night Twelve in fine fettle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The former World Champion has the highest checkout percentage in this year&#8217;s Premier League, and will look to carry such clutch finishing into his opening match against Gian van Veen on the Dutchman&#8217;s 24th birthday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Thankfully I won this one, and hopefully it will give me a bit of confidence going forward,&#8221;\u00a0said Price, after bulldozing his way to European Tour glory in Sindelfingen on Sunday with a tournament average just shy of a ton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;That was the first ProTour event I&#8217;ve played in for over a month, and I needed it as on Thursday [in Rotterdam] I was a little bit rusty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Going into this week, I&#8217;ve got a tough game against Gian up in Liverpool, but I&#8217;m full of confidence now and hopefully I can build on this.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the other quarter-finals, the world number one and two collide as Luke Littler takes on Luke Humphries in a crucial tie for the Play-Off race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>World Champion Littler sits in solid stead in second on 24 points, whilst defending Premier League champion Humphries &#8211; three points adrift of a spot at The O2 as it stands &#8211; has work to do to reach Finals Night.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Elsewhere, Michael van Gerwen will do battle with Josh Rock, as the seven-time Premier League champion hopes to bolster his chances of reaching the Play-Offs for an incredible 12th occasion.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Van Gerwen&#8217;s 16 points is double that of Rock in eighth, yet the Northern Irishman has won his last four consecutive quarter-finals and hopes to produce what would be a remarkable late burst to The O2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ranking points will be awarded per night &#8211; with five to the winner, three to the runner-up and two to the semi-finalists &#8211; to form the league table from which the top four players will progress to Finals Night at The O2 in London on Thursday May 28.<br><br><strong>Quarter-Finals Schedule<\/strong><br>Gian van Veen v Gerwyn Price<br>Stephen Bunting v Jonny Clayton<br>Josh Rock v Michael van Gerwen<br>Luke Humphries v Luke Littler<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jonny Clayton hopes to reinforce his position at the summit of the Premier League standings as the darting<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10693,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[59],"class_list":["post-11956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-darts"],"aioseo_notices":[],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/2026PremierLeagueNight6_FINAL_ClaytonPR-1.jpg",2400,2016,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/2026PremierLeagueNight6_FINAL_ClaytonPR-1-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/2026PremierLeagueNight6_FINAL_ClaytonPR-1-300x252.jpg",300,252,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/2026PremierLeagueNight6_FINAL_ClaytonPR-1-768x645.jpg",640,538,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/2026PremierLeagueNight6_FINAL_ClaytonPR-1-1024x860.jpg",640,538,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/2026PremierLeagueNight6_FINAL_ClaytonPR-1-1536x1290.jpg",1536,1290,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/2026PremierLeagueNight6_FINAL_ClaytonPR-1-2048x1720.jpg",2048,1720,true],"morenews-large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/2026PremierLeagueNight6_FINAL_ClaytonPR-1-825x575.jpg",825,575,true],"morenews-medium":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/2026PremierLeagueNight6_FINAL_ClaytonPR-1-590x410.jpg",590,410,true]},"author_info":{"info":["admin"]},"category_info":"<a href=\"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/category\/international\/\" rel=\"category tag\">International<\/a>","tag_info":"International","comment_count":"0","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/2026PremierLeagueNight6_FINAL_ClaytonPR-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11956"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11957,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11956\/revisions\/11957"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}