After initiating the growing darts at home trend, the PDC have gone all out and created a fully blown tournament, PDC Home Tour, which launches on Friday and sees the entire 128 player tour invited to take part over 32 nights and a lot more.
We are going to see the great and the good in action over the next month or so as the lockdown continues, as the professionals get the chance to maintain their competitive edge for when the tour resumes.
The Format
Each night four players will battle it out in a round robin format with the group winner progressing to the next stage of the tournament. All six matches in each group will be the best of nine legs with two points awarded for a win. If players finish level on points then leg difference will decide the outcome. If that cannot separate players then the head to head will settle the group winner. Were three players to be tied on points and leg difference the player with the highest overall average goes through. The entire tournament is being streamed live on PDC.tv.
Group 1 Line Up
A new tournament always needs a heavyweight name to launch it and they don’t come a lot bigger than the current world champion Peter Wright and he is the odds on favourite to progress from this group. He mentioned in an interview earlier in the week that it will feel a little strange but he looks to have landed a plum draw it has to be said. Generally you tend to find the lack of pressure sees players play their best practice game and there aren’t many who are better than Wright.
Jamie Lewis came to prominence in the World Championship a couple of years ago, where Wright was among his victims, but he has done little of note on Tour for a long while now and is in danger of slipping outside the top 50 in the world when the ranking action resumes, whenever that is. This might be what he needs to kick him into life as the thing with great scorers is they are all capable of amazing darts in practice. Not many score like Lewis so I’m sure the 6/1 on him will appeal to many.
Dutch ace Niels Zonneveld is also on show on the opening night of the tournament. This is his second year on the main tour having won a qualifying event at Q-School last year to get his card, but he hasn’t really taken advantage of it yet, with most of his better work coming on the development tour, where he has made a final earlier in the year. We know that all Dutch youngsters can score, it is in their DNA, so his success or otherwise could come down to his finishing.
The final player in the opening quartet is Peter Jacques. Jacques got his Tour card at Q-School this year but only on countback, and he hasn’t won many matches since then it has to be said. He didn’t pull up any trees on the Challenge Tour last season either so you would have to say he looks the weakest of the four on paper. That is reflected in the outright odds where he can be backed at 7/1 to come through the group.
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Outright Betting
It is hard to make a case for anyone other than Peter Wright to win this group, but that is fully reflected in the best price 1/2 quotes on him coming through. It would be a surprise if he lost a match against these opponents, especially with him having the throw against two of them. I do have my concerns that he said this sort of thing will feel a bit strange to him though. I don’t need to be hearing that if I’m getting stuck in at odds on.
Even if it takes him a few legs to get going I expect Wright to win this and win it well but I can’t be backing him and none of the other three really appeal to me enough to get stuck into them, even at bigger prices. There will be times when we can get stuck into the group betting but that will come later in the event as I’m not interested in the price on Wright.
Match Betting
The betting potential in this first group comes in the match betting and the beauty of this event is we know who has the throw rather than having to hope our man does or doesn’t win the bull up. If Jamie Lewis didn’t have the throw against Niels Zonneveld then I might well have chanced the Dutchman but I don’t really fancy the youngster needing to break in a decider to win the match.
Zonneveld doesn’t have the throw against Peter Jacques either but he does have a couple of things going for him. Firstly I’m convinced he is the better player of the two, which is never a bad thing in betting terms, and secondly he’ll be playing in the second straight match so he’ll be nicely warmed up. Jacques might be recovering from a beating by Peter Wright by this time too. Zonneveld is likely to outscore Jacques and as long as he hits his doubles the 10/11 on him winning here should be too big.
Tips
Back N.Zonneveld to beat P.Jacques for a 3/10 stake at 1.91 with Sky Bet
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