The first session of the UK Open sees the pub qualifiers taking on those who didn’t bank enough money in the professional qualifiers to make it automatically into the third round competing to join the big boys in the Last 64 on Friday evening.
Rounds one and two of the ‘FA Cup of Darts’ will be played across the eight boards at Butlins in Minehead on Friday afternoon with the entire session seeing matches over the best of 11 legs so we’re set for some competitive action and such is the strength in depth of darts these days even in these early rounds we’ve got some big names to enjoy.
There are two world finalists in action in the first session of the tournament when Mark Dudbridge and Kevin Painter get their campaigns underway and other big names at it from the off including Premier League star Robert Thornton, Wes Newton, Robbie Green, Andrew Gilding, Dean Winstanley and Brendan Dolan.
Even though not all of the matches are on the main board most of them have been priced up where possible so we have a selection to go at. I’m going to begin the tournament quite steadily though as the format is short and the reason they are in this round is because they are either out of form or to put it bluntly not very good.
There are two I like in this session and they are both on the main stage which helps us to keep track of them. The first one sees Dennis Smith taking on Alex Roy where I’m actually a little surprised the latter is the favourite to win.
Roy dropped off the PDC circuit a while back and has dabbled on the BDO tour albeit with minimal success so you’ve got to think his standard has dropped from his halcyon days when he was regularly competing in PDC majors.
Dennis Smith regained his PDC tour card with a solid effort at Q-school and I’m a big believer in players coming through that going well for the first couple of months of the year. The relief having a card can provide allows a player to throw with a bit of freedom and we saw that in the qualifying events for this when Smith took care of Keegan Brown and a couple of other solid throwers.
Neither has an edge on experience but the fact that Smith is still competitive on the tour should make him favourite here. The fact he isn’t has drawn me in for a punt on him.
The match after that has my attention too as Andy Smith graces the big stage again when he takes on the Dutch youngster Jermaine Wattimena. Smith has done little of any note for a while and that is on the floor let alone the stage. He could probably have done with this match being on an outside board away from the spotlight but that isn’t the case.
Wattimena is getting more and more experience on the big stage and should be comfortable on it now. He’s not yet at the level where he can compete with the big boys but if he is to rise through the rankings then he really needs to be coming through matches like this.
Wattimena has plenty of scoring power and his fast pace can put pressure on Smith and we’ve seen over the last couple of years that he wilts under that pressure. I’m on the Dutchman here.
Back D.Smith to beat A.Roy for a 4/10 stake at 2.02 with Bwin
Back him here:
WON – Back J.Wattimena to beat A.Smith for a 4/10 stake at 2.00 with Boylesports
Back him here:
