The first round of the PDC World Championship concludes inside the Alexandra Palace on Wednesday afternoon with the final four men yet to get their tournaments underway in the round doing so in an intriguing session of action.
We have the last two first round matches taking place along with two more from the second round as the tournament begins to cranks up a notch as we head towards Christmas. We’ve had drama and tension so far and that is set to continue here.
Nathan Aspinall vs Geert Nentjes
Two youngsters get the day underway on Wednesday when Nathan Aspinall takes on the Dutch youngster Geert Nentjes with the winner progressing to face Gerwyn Price in the second round of the tournament.
Aspinall has a good reputation in the game and he can trouble the big players but he won’t have been a favourite on the TV stage too often and we will see how he copes with that here. We’ve seen all week so far that these youngsters have no nerves so I don’t think Aspinall is going to face a weak opponent here. Aspinall’s experienced enough that he should have enough here but I don’t think it is guaranteed by any means. This is the very definition of a no bet match and I won’t ignore that.
Jeffrey de Graaf vs Noel Malicdem
The final match of the first round sees the Dutch former BDO star Jeffrey de Graaf taking on Noel Malicdem, one of the Asian qualifiers for the right to face Kyle Anderson in the second round later in the competition.
You get the feeling this is a big match for de Graaf. This is his sixth World Championship either in the BDO or the PDC and he is still searching for his first win. On the face of it he probably has his easiest draw here although he has been beaten by some strange names in Martin Atkins and Brian Dawson among others. We’ve seen all week that the Asians have been on fire. Lourence Ilagan played better than his scoreline suggested and Seigo Asada was excellent in beating Ratajski.
We’ve not seen much of Malicdem but he has been going well on the Asian Tour which looks like it is doing a good job. If the Filipino can get in front early on it could be that he breaks the back of de Graaf’s resistance and with that he must be a big price at 5/2 here.
[the_ad_group id=”3624″]
Joe Cullen vs Brendan Dolan
Joe Cullen begins his World Championship campaign with a second round clash against Brendan Dolan, who came past Yuanjun Liu in the previous round although in truth he didn’t really beat anything in that one.
Dolan will need to up his game quite a bit from that performance. He only averaged 86.63 and hit just a third of his doubles in a pretty low key outing. He is better than that but the reason he played in the first round is because his best is fading. That isn’t the case with Cullen. He has had an excellent year on the big stage and generally performs well here even in defeat.
Dolan will be buoyed by his 7-3 lead in the head to head matches between the two but their careers have gone in the opposite direction over the last 18 months or so and now I expect Cullen to win this match and do so with a fair bit in hand. Cullen scores strongly and doesn’t miss many doubles. I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t win 3-0 or 3-1.
Kim Huybrechts vs Daniel Larsson
The last match of the afternoon sees Kim Huybrechts looking for an elusive big stage win when he takes on Daniel Larsson, who was very impressive in beating Robert Thornton in the first round on Tuesday afternoon.
Huybrechts has had a wretched time of it in 2018. He has barely won a TV game and just always looks under pressure on the big stage so he’ll need to find a way to relax and play his best game here. That is not going to be easy with the burden of being the favourite especially having seen Larsson play so well on Tuesday.
It remains to be seen whether Larsson can back that up or is good enough to beat Huybrechts but the evidence of recent times suggests that he shouldn’t be a 2/1 shot to win this match. I’ll take the chance the Swede causes another huge upset.
Tips
WON – Back N.Malicdem to beat J.de Graaf for a 3/10 stake at 3.50 with BetVictor
Back him here:
Back J.Cullen (-1.5 sets) to beat B.Dolan for a 4/10 stake at 1.73 with Betfred
Back him here:
Back D.Larsson to beat K.Huybrechts for a 3/10 stake at 3.00 with Coral
Back him here:
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2018
