Two semi-finals, two defeats, one opponent. Wesley Harms played his first two BDO World Championships in 2012 and 2013, reached the last four both times and was beaten both times by Tony O’Shea, first 6–5 and then 6–4.
Between those two Januaries he won enough elsewhere to sit, briefly, at the top of the WDF world rankings.
Sparky from Alkmaar
Harms was born in Alkmaar on 11 June 1984 and started playing darts around 2003, late by the standard of most Dutch players on the circuit. He worked as an electrician, which is all there is to the nickname: on stage he was “Sparky”, and he walked on to Bon Jovi’s “It’s My Life”.
He joined the BDO circuit in 2008 and played it in full from 2011. The first ranking title came that year at the BDO International Open, where he beat Gary Robson, Dean Winstanley, Garry Thompson and, in the final, Stephen Bunting.
Seeded on Debut
That form was enough for a seeding at his first world championship. Harms went to Frimley Green in January 2012 as the thirteenth seed and beat Martin Phillips, Robbie Green and Paul Jennings, another debutant, to reach the semi-final. O’Shea won it 6–5 in sets.
The rest of 2012 was his best season. He won the Swiss Open and the England Open in June, added the French Open in the autumn, and reached the semi-finals of the Winmau World Masters, where Bunting beat him 5–3. He was also in the Netherlands team that won the European Cup in Turkey.
In January 2013 he went back to the Lakeside Country Club and repeated the run: Rune David, Alan Norris and Darryl Fitton, then O’Shea again in the semi-final, this time 6–4.
St. John’s, 2013
The biggest title of his career came later that year at the WDF World Cup in St. John’s, Newfoundland. On the way through the singles he beat three England players, Glen Durrant, O’Shea and finally Bunting, then the world number one, by 7–6 in the final. Earlier in 2013 he had also won the Scottish Open, beating John Walton, Robbie Green, Gary Robson and Jim Williams.
Bunting got his own back in December, beating Harms 3–2 in the semi-finals of the Zuiderduin Masters.
One Dart at Double 16
The 2014 championship ended in the second round and in the most painful way available. Harms threw for the match against Tony Eccles in the sixth set and missed his one dart at double 16. In the next leg he left double 18 for the match, and Eccles checked out 122 to take the set. Eccles won 4–3.
He kept qualifying for Lakeside every year until the BDO’s last championship in 2020, but never returned to the semi-finals. The best of the later runs was a quarter-final in 2016, lost 5–1 to Jamie Hughes. In 2018 Wayne Warren beat him in the first round, and in 2020 his last Lakeside match was a 4–2 defeat by Scott Waites.
Away from the world championship, Harms kept winning. He took the Scottish Open again and added, among others, the British Open, the Denmark Open and the England Classic in 2019, and he reached the semi-finals of the BDO World Trophy in 2017.
A Short PDC Spell
With the BDO in collapse, Harms won a PDC Tour Card on the fourth day of the European Q School in 2020. He did not go back to Q School when the card ran out in 2022, and stepped away. By May 2023 he was playing again, in the MODUS Super Series.
His world championship record stayed where it was set in his first two years: nine appearances, two semi-finals, both of them lost to O’Shea.
