Benito van de Pas made his Lakeside debut as a seed at 18 and lost in the first round. He came back twice more and lost in the first round both times. Then he crossed to the PDC and, within two years, beat Michael van Gerwen in a final.
The two halves of that career look like they belong to different players. The BDO years are three short visits to Frimley Green. The PDC years include three ranking titles, a place in the world’s top 16 and four runs to the last 16 of the PDC World Championship.
Tilburg, Accountancy and “Big Ben”
Van de Pas was born in Tilburg on 18 January 1993 and started playing in 2003. When he first came to Lakeside he was still a student, studying accountancy, and a supporter of Eindhoven and Liverpool. On the stage he became “Big Ben”, walking on to Kiss and “I Was Made for Lovin’ You”.
He was quick to reach the latter stages of events. At 18 he got to the semi-finals of the 2011 PDC Under-21 World Championship, where van Gerwen beat him 4–1.
2011: The German Open and a Seeding
His 2011 BDO season was the one that took him to the world championship. He won the German Open, reached the semi-finals of the England Open, the BDO International Open and the Swiss Open, the quarter-finals of the Dutch Open and the Czech Open, and the last 16 of the Centerparcs Masters, the Antwerp Open and the Mariflex Open. The German Open win helped him qualify for the 2012 championship as the fourteenth seed.
Three Januaries at Lakeside
None of his three appearances at the Lakeside Country Club got past the first round:
- 2012: lost 3–2 to Alan Norris.
- 2013: lost 3–2 to Darryl Fitton.
- 2014: lost 3–0 to Jan Dekker.
Two of those defeats went to a deciding set. The same Alan Norris who beat him in 2012 went out in the quarter-finals that year to Christian Kist, the Dutch qualifier who won the title. The winners of those three years are on the BDO world champions page.
Q-School and the First PDC Seasons
In January 2014 van de Pas went to the PDC’s Qualifying School and won a tour card on the first day, beating fellow Dutch BDO player Joey ten Berge 5–4 in the final round. The first season was full of near misses. At the Gibraltar Darts Trophy he beat van Gerwen, then world number one, 6–5, opening that match with a ten-dart leg, and then lost 6–5 to James Wade after missing three match darts at double top.
His Pro Tour earnings put him into the 2015 World Championship. He beat Paul Nicholson in a deciding set and then came from behind twice to beat Dave Chisnall 4–2, before Robert Thornton beat him 4–0 in the third round. He finished that first year ranked 42nd in the world. In 2015 he also threw his first nine-darter on the PDC tour, ended van Gerwen’s 21-match unbeaten run on the European Tour at the International Darts Open and reached his first PDC final there, losing 6–3 to Michael Smith, and made the quarter-finals of the Players Championship Finals.
2016: Three Titles and the Top 16
The breakthrough came in April 2016. He lost the final of the third Players Championship event to van Gerwen, and the next day beat him 6–5 from 5–2 down to win his first PDC ranking title. He won the ninth event as well, whitewashing Joe Cullen 6–0 with an average of 111, and took a third Players Championship title at the last event of the year, beating Chisnall in the final. He reached the quarter-finals of the World Grand Prix, topped his group at the Grand Slam, and broke into the top 16 of the Order of Merit for the first time.
In 2017 he reached the World Grand Prix quarter-finals again and the final of the German Darts Open, where Peter Wright beat him 6–5 after van de Pas missed double seven for the title.
The Decline
At the PDC World Championship he reached the third round in 2015, 2016 and 2017 and the fourth round in 2019, where Brendan Dolan beat him 4–1. In 2020 he lost 3–2 to Max Hopp in the second round. His form fell away after that, and he lost his tour card at the end of 2020. He played his last PDC events in 2021.
