The evening session at the PDC World Championship on Tuesday looks like it will be full of quality darts as eight more men do battle for places in the next round of the tournament, looking to make Christmas that extra bit special.
The last two evenings have seen massive shocks inside Alexandra Palace and Daryl Gurney will be out to avoid being the third of those. He is the standout star on what is actually a decent looking card.
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Steve Lennon vs James Bailey
The opening match of the evening sees the solid Irishman, Steve Lennon taking on the Australian qualifier James Bailey for the right to face Alan Norris in the second round later in the tournament.
Lennon is one of those players who doesn’t really standout but he doesn’t do a lot wrong and often gets the job done and I expect him to do that here. We’ve seen James Bailey in a couple of the World Series events with minimal success and he failed to win his tour card at Q-School at the beginning of the year so there is clearly a limitation to his play. I’m fairly confident Lennon will win this with a bit in hand but there is nothing in any of the odds to justify a bet.
Ron Meulenkamp vs Diogo Portela
The second match of the session will be an interesting one as the Dutch left-hander Ron Meulenkamp looks to make it into the second round of the tournament when he takes on the capable Brazilian, Diogo Portela.
Meulenkamp is another player who is solid enough without being all that spectacular and that has often been the order of the day in this first round to date. His experience may serve him well too but we saw Portela put in a decent performance in defeat here last year in a 3-1 loss to Peter Wright and a repeat of that display should earn him a set or two at the very least.
Ultimately there is a reason why Meulenkamp gets into the European Tour events and lower level TV events and I think we’ll see that here but there is enough to like in the Brazilian to think he’ll win a set or two in defeat.
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Dimitri Van den Bergh vs Chuck Puleo
One of the stars of last year’s tournament, Dimitri Van den Bergh is up third on the evening when he looks to book a second round meeting with Jonny Clayton when he faces the American qualifier Chuck Puleo.
The World Youth champion should be full of confidence going up onto this stage where he will surely have good memories having made the last eight last year. He’s under all the pressure here though and we’ve seen in a couple of TV events this year already that he doesn’t always deliver under that sort of scrutiny. Puleo has some decent scalps on his CV in the North American tournaments this year which suggests he can play so DVDB will need to be focused to come through here. I would be surprised if he doesn’t win but his play in 2018 ensures I’ll swerve him at the prices.
Daryl Gurney vs Ross Smith
The one match in the second round of the tournament sees the Players Championship Finals winner Daryl Gurney going up against Ross Smith for a place in the longer formats of the last 32 of the competition.
Gurney goes into the match as a warm favourite and after runs to the semi-finals of the World Grand Prix and then that win in Minehead he’s certainly in decent form on the big stage. Smith has had a match this week where he averaged 92 in a game where he was probably unlikely to be at his best given the situation but he played well enough.
Interestingly, the head to head between these two is 2-2 with the last two matches being won by Smith in a deciding leg. That makes me think that there will be a fair bit of play in this one which in turn should bring the likelihood of 180s into play. Gurney is a heavy scorer while Smith knows his way to the 60. Four sets would equal us needing one per set per player but Gurney scores better than that. I think over 7.5 lands here.
Tips
WON – Back R.Meulenkamp to beat D.Portela and both players to win a set for a 4/10 stake at 2.00 with Betfred
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WON – Back D.Gurney vs R.Smith – Over 7.5 180s for a 4/10 stake at 1.83 with Coral
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