We’ve had two great days to open up the BDO World Championship at the Lakeside County Club in Frimley Green and we’ve already seen some really top level darts and we have another busy, two session day to enjoy on Monday.
Sunday saw the defending champion given a mighty scare before progressing to the second round and a couple of former champions graced the oche and came through too. Ted Hankey played ok to come through his preliminary round match while Scott Waites looked back to his best as he sailed into the second round.
Monday sees plenty more challengers for the title in action alongside more former champions. The preliminary round concludes on Monday afternoon when the Australian player Rob Modra takes on the 2001 champion John Walton.
This is a big match for Walton. He decided to leave the BDO at the beginning of the year but after failing to earn his PDC tour card he is back for more here. Walton has given the PDC Challenge Tour a go this year and gone ok but has struggled a bit more on the county scene.
I’ve already flagged up Modra’s bio when I previewed the tournament and it will be interesting to see how he settles down in this match. He will take confidence from Craig Caldwell’s exploits on the stage I’m sure and so this is a good match to open proceedings. I’ll sit this one out and cheer Modra through rather than get involved.
I’m taking the same plan in the second match of the day where I’m already on Jeffrey de Graaf outright in the tournament. I think he will beat Richard Veenstra in the first round but until we see him win a game on this Lakeside stage I would be silly to recommend another punt on him at a short price.
I do however have a bet in the final match of the afternoon where I see Pip Blackwell as a good thing against Martin Atkins. Atkins might have Blackwell comfortably covered on experience here but that’s about all he does cover him on.
Blackwell is a solid scorer and isn’t going to miss too many doubles and having had last year here to get used to what it is all about I think he can pick up his first win in this match and I would expect him to overpower Atkins. At 5/4 on the -1.5 handicap he looks a very nice price.
Moving into the evening and the interesting matches keep on coming. The young Dutch player Ryan de Vreede takes on the Bald Eagle from America Larry Butler in a battle between two men who probably had their better days on the PDC circuit.
De Vreede was in the PDC World Championship last year albeit losing quickly in the first round to Dave Chisnall but there is no harm in that. Larry Butler won the inaugural World Matchplay back in the 90s and it is credit to him that he is still going strong some 20 odd years later.
Butler goes into the match as the favourite and having played a match this weekend already he might have a bit of an advantage there but I don’t think de Vreede is going to go without a fight here so I’m reluctant to bet in the match. If I was going to I’d chance the Dutch player but I’ll leave it alone I think.
Arguably the match of the first round takes place on Monday night when Jamie Hughes plays Ross Montgomery in a real heavyweight battle. These two are good enough to both go deep in the tournament but obviously only one can go through.
Hughes is a favourite to win this match but I don’t think he’s as certain to go through as the odds suggest. I rate Hughes a lot but Montgomery has been around the block for a while and is more than capable of causing an upset here.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this match goes the full five sets and I’m not really keen on sitting through a deciding set biting nails and things. This should be a really good game to watch so I’ll take a watching brief on it.
The final men’s match on Monday sees The Count back on the stage as Ted Hankey takes on Martin Phillips. Hankey came through his preliminary round match on Sunday and he looked fairly good for the most part but the longer the match went he did slow down and that would be a concern here.
When this tournament was looming on the horizon a couple of months back I had no intention of going anywhere near Phillips but credit to the Welshman he has really discovered his best form again in recent times and is now playing the sort of darts that twice took him to the semi-final of this event.
You can never truly be confident in betting in a Hankey match purely because you never know quite what Ted will do on the stage either when he’s throwing darts or when he isn’t but we can be as confident as possible that Phillips won’t fall for Ted’s antics.
He will just play his game and play it in a good, relentless rhythm and whether it is in a tight match or a one sided one I expect him to come through.
In the women’s tournament Aileen de Graaf takes on Casey Gallagher for a place in the quarter final. The shocks continued in this draw when Fallon Sherrock bit the dust on Sunday and that result is likely to make everyone more nervous and I’m expecting quite a bit of drama in the remaining first round matches. With that in mind I’ll sit on my cash here.
Back P.Blackwell (-1.5 sets) to beat M.Atkins for a 4/10 stake at 2.38 with Ladbrokes
Back M.Phillips to beat T.Hankey for a 4/10 stake at 1.80 with Paddy Power
