The Grand Slam of Darts is always one of the better tournaments on the darts circuit and it returns to Wolverhampton this year after a one-year sabbatical to Milton Keynes 12 months ago due to the pandemic and sport being played behind closed doors.
The tournament begins on Saturday and offers up the chance for Jose de Sousa to defend the title he won in completely different circumstances to the ones he will look to hold onto his crown in. A top field looks to beat him.
Recent Winners
2020 – Jose de Sousa
2019 – Gerwyn Price
2018 – Gerwyn Price
2017 – Michael van Gerwen
2016 – Michael van Gerwen
2015 – Michael van Gerwen
2014 – Phil Taylor
2013 – Phil Taylor
2012 – Raymond van Barneveld
2011 – Phil Taylor
The Format
The 32 players have been placed in eight groups of four based on their ranking in the PDC setup. The group stage sees each player playing the other three in the group over the best of nine legs after which the top two go through to the knockout stages. Leg difference is used to separate players tied on points and a nine dart shootout will be used if points and leg difference are the same. The last 16 is the best of 19 legs and then the remainder of the event is the best of 31 legs with the champion being crowned on the second Sunday of the tournament.
Group A
This isn’t a tournament where the defending champion is the number one seed. Instead it is done on world rankings so it is Gerwyn Price who is the top seed in Group A this week. The world champion was the winner of this event the last two times it was played in front of a crowd and will be looking to complete a hat trick of wins this week. His toughest challenger in terms of rankings in the group phase comes in the form of Krzysztof Ratajski who has been in decent form recently. The German player Martin Schindler and Nathan Rafferty complete this group.
Group B
There is a Welsh star heading up the rankings over in Group B as well as the Premier League and World Grand Prix winner Jonny Clayton will be expected to dominate proceedings. He is very much the man for the big tournaments at the minute and has a group where it is hard to see him not coming through. Mervyn King is another in good form and he will look to be his closest challenger while the young pair of Bradley Brooks and Rusty-John Rodirguez will be assigned the task of causing a major upset over the course of the group.
Group C
James Wade probably still has bad memories of this tournament from back in 2010 when he lost the final to Scott Waites from an extremely dominant position. His hate affair with this event continued last year when he lost to Jose de Sousa in the final so he’ll certainly not lack for motivation to finally get his hands on this title. He heads up Group C with Rob Cross his biggest challenger. We saw Cross come good again when he won the European Championship and he’s a real threat here. This group is completely by Boris Krcmar and the potentially dangerous Jim Williams who has been winning a lot of matches on the Challenge Tour.
Group D
Dimitri Van den Bergh was due to be the star attraction in Group D this week but he withdrew from the event on Thursday which leaves the World Championship semi-finalist Stephen Bunting as the top dog in this section. Chris Dobey is the man who has replaced Van den Bergh in the field and he slots into this section as well. Ryan Joyce hasn’t been seen on TV much since the World Championship but he has qualified for this event and is another player in this group. The fourth player in is the World Cup finalist Rowby-John Rodriguez.
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Group E
The World Matchplay winner Peter Wright remains number two in the world and as such he is the leading contender in Group E of a tournament which surprisingly he has never won, losing twice in the final in 2017 and 2019. Wright will be expected to come through his group draw but Gabriel Clemens might be a tough nut to crack. Mike De Decker had a good night at the qualifier to take his place in this group and the section is completely by Fallon Sherrock, who will be out to show her World Championship run two years ago was no fluke.
Group F
This is the group from which the defending champion Jose de Sousa will be looking to make a successful defence of the title from. It has to be said the Portuguese is in something of a group of death though with the UK Open finalist Luke Humphries and the World Cup finalist Mensur Suljovic the other two established players in his section. Even the lowest ranked player is Matt Campbell, the Canadian who has shown he is more than capable of mixing it with the big boys at this level.
Group G
Michael van Gerwen has won this event three times and will go in search of a fourth title from Group G of the draw. We are used to seeing him in Group A as the leading player in the world but he is only ranked third these days which pits him in a tricky little part of the draw. Joe Cullen and he played out an epic World Championship contest last year and they will meet again in the group stage here. The World Cup winner John Henderson is also in this group while Lisa Ashton will have her work cut out to make it out of the section.
Group H
The toughest looking group of the eight on paper is Group H where three of the best in the world over the last decade or so will battle it out for the qualifying places. Gary Anderson is still high up in the world rankings. The former finalist is the seeded player in this group but recent inactivity could leave him vulnerable to two class acts in Michael Smith and Raymond van Barneveld, who breezed through the qualifier to make it into this draw. The other player in the field is the youngster Joe Davis.
Outright Betting
I’ll take a couple of outrights for this tournament with the first of them being Rob Cross, who is coming back to form in a big way at the minute. After winning the European Championship he then followed that up with runs of winner, semi-final, semi-final in the three Players Championship events from PC26 to PC28, the last of which was less than a fortnight ago. We know Cross can win the big events because he’s won the biggest two in the sport in the past. He went through the doldrums with his throw and the off board problems which have been documented but he looks in a much better place now and with this being a ranking event these days and Cross only making it to the second round a couple of years ago, the European champion could bolster his ranking with a huge run this week. Cross has never failed to get out of his group and with Dimitri Van den Bergh withdrawing his potential second round match has gotten a little easier. I think Cross can go deep here.
I’ll also take my chances with Mensur Suljovic, who a couple of months back was one of the hottest properties on the circuit once again. He’s gone a little quieter in recent times but he remains a class act and if he can come out of his group, which it has to be said isn’t a certainty, but it isn’t an impossibility at the same time, then he could go very far. Suljovic has a winning record over his two biggest dangers in the group in Jose de Sousa and Luke Humphries. He leads de Sousa 3-1 having won their last three matches and Humphries 1-0. He is yet to play Matt Campbell. Suljovic hasn’t been in this event for the last two years so he will be bumping up his ranking the further he goes this week which will act as all the inspiration he needs. He was a semi-finalist here in 2018 and a quarter finalist the year before that. If he comes out of his group he’ll get one of Peter Wright, Gabriel Clemens, Mike de Decker or Fallon Sherrock in the second round and there isn’t a lot to fear there right now. Suljovic looks a massive price at 100/1.
Group Betting
There is just the one group bet which interests me from a betting point of view and that comes in the supposed ‘Group of Death’ in Group H where I think Raymond van Barneveld is overpriced to come out on top in a group with Gary Anderson, Michael Smith and Joe Davis. Davis was up against it anyway but apparently he is suffering with tennis elbow and while that is no good for tennis it isn’t much better for darts so we should be able to leave him out of the equation.
Anderson has only won five of his last 13 matches in all competitions and if you exclude the Danish amateur he beat in the World Series event in Copenhagen he has lost his last four televised matches. He looks undercooked for this task to me. Smith might be the danger to Barney winning the group but he has plenty of off days especially on the doubles. He is also on a run of losing his last four televised matches. It might be that the meeting between Smith and Barneveld decides the group and the Dutchman isn’t 4/1 to beat Smith so the value is in backing Barneveld to win the group, which if he repeats his 100+ averages from recent floor events he would have every chance of doing.
Tips
Back R.Cross to win Grand Slam of Darts (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 21.00 with 888sport (1/2 1-2)
Back him here:
Back M.Suljovic to win Grand Slam of Darts (e/w) for a 0.5/10 stake at 101.00 with BetVictor (1/2 1-2)
Back him here:
Back R.Barneveld to win Group H for a 2/10 stake at 5.00 with Boylesports
Back him here:
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