The last two quarter finals of the PDC World Darts Championship take place in what looks to be a high quality evening session of action inside the Alexandra Palace in London on New Year’s Day, as the semi-final line up of the tournament gets finalised.
We have four stars on show over the course of the evening with all four having either won a TV title or made a world final and have all been regulars in the Premier League. It would be amazing if they quality is not incredibly strong here.
Gerwyn Price vs Daryl Gurney
We get underway with two men who graced the Premier League last year when the world number three Gerwyn Price continues his pursuit of the title which would take him to the top of the world rankings, when he goes up against a Daryl Gurney who is looking to continue what has been a strong campaign to date.
Price came here under the pressure of expectation of being one of the favourites to come through and win the title and although he was made to battle in his first two matches, you wouldn’t say he played badly by any means. There have been patches where he has gone off on his doubles and it will be interesting to see how that goes as the pressure only intensifies on him from here on in. Often his scoring power gets him out of it though.
Gurney came here completely the opposite of Price. He was in such dreadful form that just winning a match might have been considered an achievement by some. He hasn’t just won a match, he’s won three and he has played close to his best form in all three games to do so. He is scoring well, hitting plenty of doubles and averaging over 100 in a lot of sets that he plays. A repeat of that will make him hard to beat in this contest.
Matches between these two have a habit of being extremely tight. Although Price leads the head to head 9-3, they have delivered four draws including both meetings in the Premier League last season. That makes me think we are in for a tight match here, one which I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we go the distance or if Gurney wins. When you think Gurney drew twice with Price at a time his form had completely deserted him makes me think we could see an upset here but at odds against I’ll stick with over 7.5 sets which offers the chance of a tight Price win for us to get paid.
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Michael van Gerwen vs Dave Chisnall
The last of the quarter finals on paper at least is the pick of the matches as the world number one Michael van Gerwen looks to move to within two wins of a fourth world title when he goes up against the eighth ranked player Dave Chisnall who is bidding to reach the last four of this event for the first time.
Van Gerwen has taken everything his last two opponents have thrown at him and come out on the other side and with the way Chisnall is playing you’ve got to think he might have to do that again here. Chisnall has come through the draw very nicely and his match against Dimitri Van den Bergh would have taken all the plaudits had van Gerwen not played that match against Joe Cullen the night before. There is certainly nothing to suggest that we won’t be in for a cracking contest to end the day here.
I’m not ruling Chisnall out in this match but you have to suggest he is up against it with the way that van Gerwen is currently playing. He should be capable of hanging around long enough for over 16.5 180s to land though. The 180 per leg ratio when these two meet is usually incredibly high and with van Gerwen not switching as often has he has in the past in this tournament you’ve got to think he’ll contribute nicely to the total. We need eight 180s each in this match with one added to it, so were we to get the seven sets we got when they met in the World Grand Prix final in 2019 we need a 180 per set each and a couple on top. That doesn’t feel out of reach on what we’ve seen so far this week.
Tips
WON – Back G.Price vs D.Gurney – Over 7.5 sets for a 3/10 stake at 2.10 with Betfair
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WON – Back M.van Gerwen vs D.Chisnall – Over 16.5 180s for a 3/10 stake at 1.75 with Coral
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