A huge title will be won on Sunday night when the final of the World Grand Prix takes place inside the Morningside Arena in Leicester when Gerwyn Price looks to regain the trophy when he meets Luke Humphries.
Humphries will not just be looking for a first World Grand Prix success here but a first TV title overall whereas Price is a seasoned campaigner when it comes to winning these TV events so it will be interesting to see if that proves the difference in this best-of-nine set clash.
Gerwyn Price
Quite often the finalists of this competition have had to battle hard along the way and overcome a few scares but that hasn’t been the case with Gerwyn Price. He has reached this final largely untroubled with the only match that he dropped a set in being the semi-final against Michael Smith. Even then he won that without really being forced to play his best stuff. You sense that best game is gagging to come out should someone force it out of him.
The latter stages of this tournament is nothing new for Price. He has won the title, made the final and then the semi-final in the last three years and now he is back in the final so not only is the final weekend of this competition a familiar feeling for him, the format seems to suit him too. That leaves the only potential stumbling block to him not performing well being the fact he is favourite but even then he is used to that as well.
Luke Humphries
This is the first time Luke Humphries has reached the World Grand Prix final so he is already treading new territory in this match. This isn’t the first TV final he has reached so he sort of knows what to expect which should in theory help him perform well but he still isn’t what you would call completely experienced in the situation so you would imagine a fast start will be imperative for him. We saw someone much more experienced in big finals in Nathan Aspinall allow the final to get away from him last season.
Humphries hasn’t had it all his own way this week. He had to survive match darts from Peter Wright in the quarter final and was the beneficiary of a bunch of misses in the semi-final against Joe Cullen which partly equates to why the margin of victory in that match is as big as it was. In the main Humphries has hit the doubles well this week, particularly the starting one and the longer the week has gone on the better his scoring has got, which bodes well.
Special Offer
OPEN AN ACCOUNT WITH 888SPORT AND BET £10 TO GET £30 IN FREE BETS PLUS A £10 CASINO BONUS! PERFECT OFFER TO USE ON THIS TOURNAMENT! CLICK THE IMAGE BELOW TO JOIN. USE CODE 30F. NEW ACCOUNTS ONLY. 18+ T&Cs apply (See image for significant terms). Gamble Aware.
Head-to-head
There have been 11 previous meetings between these two with Gerwyn Price holding a fairly significant advantage with seven wins to the three of Luke Humphries. They also drew an encounter at the Premier League when Humphries was invited as a challenger. In 2023 it is Humphries who has the edge. He has won both of their meetings, one of which was on TV at the US Masters. They have met in one final before which was a Players Championship event in 2021 and Price won on that occasion. This is their first battle in the set format.
Betting
We don’t usually see close finals in this tournament but a lot of the reason for that is because there have been so many surprises earlier in the week that we have a surprise finalist somewhere along the line. If you look to last year Nathan Aspinall doesn’t seem like a surprise finalist but he was rebuilding after an elbow injury and was a fair way down the betting market. Finalists prior to that include Dirk van Duijvenbode, Dave Chisnall, Mervyn King and Brendan Dolan.
That isn’t the case this time around. This year there are two top class finalists on show and when we have had finalists of similar quality in recent times we have seen the conclusion to this tournament being much closer. I fancy this one will be close. Price is probably the better player of the two but Humphries knows he can beat him and the way the Englishman has started legs in this event bodes well for him. Humphries stated he was going to give this final everything he has got after his semi-final win and we know Price will too so the even money on over 7.5 sets feels a fair price to me.
Tips
Back Over 7.5 sets for a 3/10 stake at 2.00 with Bet365
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2023
