As the PDC Asian Tour is getting bigger every year, not only more and more people are following the tour closely, but also players from even more nations decide to give one or more of the weekends a shot. This year, we’ve seen players from countries like Kazakhstan, Palestine, Oman and Jordan. During the 8th tournament this year, held in the Philippines, we saw Bruneian talent ‘Abdul Qahar Ukail Hj Shamsul Ariffin or short: Abdul Qahar Ukail’ step up and make it to the semifinals. Brunei, not very well known as a darts country, was put on the map, people actually calling for the Bruneian team to make it to the 2024 PDC World Cup. That didn’t happen, but I’m very happy to have spoken with the young talent from Brunei about his darts journey, his ambitions and goals and his experience during some of the recent tournaments he’s played.
Abdul Qahar Ukail, who is 27 years old and from Bukit Beruang in the Tutong district in Brunei Darussalam is self-employed and spends most of his time training darts at home and joining the local tournament events every week. In a country without a night life and with a small population, Ukail explains how he started out playing darts: ‘’I’ve started playing casually since 2012 with my friends around the neighborhood. At first, I didn’t own any sets of darts and dartboard. Then one day, I joined a tournament in my neighborhood and I won the whole thing by using a house dart that’s provided. As the winner they gave me a set of dart. Since then, I started to play casually by joining local events and small tournaments. I started to love the games eventually.’’
As said in the introduction, Brunei is not exactly known as a darts country and not everyone might have heard of it after all. Brunei is a very small country near Indonesia and Malaysia. Ukail: ‘’Brunei Darussalam is a very peaceful Muslim country that many people in the world are not aware of. Brunei is a very safe country to live in. Schools and hospitals are almost free here for the Bruneians and we live tax free as a Bruneian. If you love nature, Brunei has the best to offer.’’
How does playing darts in Brunei go? Ukail explains: ‘’We don’t have the night life here in Brunei such as clubs, pubs or any forms of night entertainment. Since there is no nightlife in Brunei, I grab the opportunity to spend my time perfecting my darts by training daily at night. I usually train by myself at home, sometime looking for somebody to spar either at my place or at their house. There is a weekly event in Brunei, sometimes it’s a single event sometimes it’s a double event. Nowadays there are a lot of strong dart players here in Brunei that need a lot of exposure.’’
Talking about the Asian Tour, Ukail just participated in Asian Tour 7-9 in the Philippines and made it to the semifinals in Tour 8. He experienced the tour as follows:
‘’Asian Tour is a whole experience for me because before that I only joined the big tournaments in the Malaysian darts scene, I also knew most of the strong dart players came from the Philippines, that’s why I want to challenged myself and start my Asian tour in Manila, Philippines. I didn’t expect to reach the semifinal stage on tour 8, for me it was like a stepping stone to reach another stage in my career.
In the last 32 I was paired with Robbie Wong from Malaysia; it was an intense match where he lead 3-0 but I managed to compose myself and making a comeback with hitting a 148 finish at the deciding leg.
In the semifinal match I got paired with Tomoya Goto from Japan. He’s a very strong player! I can compete in terms of scoring, but his finishing is very strong. Sadly, I lost to him 5-0. Nevertheless, the whole experience thought me that nothing is impossible if you put your heart and soul into it.’’
Another recent tournament Ukail has played, is the Winmau Sabah Masters in Malaysia, a steel tip tournament played on FIDO boards, where Ukail claimed the singles and team title and was semi finalist in the doubles event. You can watch the singles final below the interview. After that, Ukail also played the PDC Asian Tour 10-12 in Malaysia, making the T64 in all three tournaments.
As to the question if Ukail has plans to play more tournaments overseas and as what his aspirations are for the next year, he said: ‘’I would love to enter more of PDC Tournaments either in Asia or EU. My main target currently is either the Asian Stage / Championship or god’s willing to Biggest of all PDC World Championship next year. I would also like to compete for a spot for the PDC World Cup of Darts next year.”
He describes the highlights in his darts career as following:
This year alone:
Champion 3some events, in Kuching,Sarawak.
Champion Marzuq international double open 2024 in Miri, Sarawak.
Champion Sabah Open 2024.
Semi Finalist Asian Tour 8.
Winmau Sabah Masters 2024 winning the single open category and team event. And semi Finalist in Double event
His inspiration in darts is local player Pengiran Mohamed. Darts fans may know him for being the first Bruneian darts player to participate in a World Championship, as he qualified for the 2018 BDO World Championship.
‘’He’s been playing for 20+ years and still playing at his best performances and he is considered as my mentor in darts. Another inspiration is Dutch player Michael Van Gerwen, because of his aggressive playstyle and his dominance in darts world.’’
As a final message to the readers, Abdul Qahar Ukail says:
‘’I would like to thank my family especially my mom, dad, family and friends for supporting me all the way. I would also like thank asiandarts.sport.blog for giving me this opportunity to tell more about Asian darts scene and especially for Bruneian darts scene.’’
I’d really like to thank Qahar for his time and effort he put into answering my questions for AsianDarts and wish him the best of luck on his darts journey and achieving his goals.
Picture credits: PDC Asia, Abdul Qahar Ukail (FB).
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