The opening day of the Czech Darts Open will see the qualifiers battling it out over the two sessions of play out in Prague with the aim of getting to six legs and setting up a shot at a seeded player in the second round on Saturday.
Winning a first round match is the overriding aim here but there is the subplot of a number of the players on show on Friday needing wins to book their spot at the European Championship which gets underway on Thursday so there is plenty at stake here.
Afternoon Session
The afternoon begins with a couple of lower ranked players looking to set up a big weekend when Robert Owen goes up against the Dutch player Niels Zonneveld. Another Dutch dartist takes to the stage for the second match of the session when Jermaine Wattimena goes up against Patrik Kovacs. Ritchie Edhouse has been enjoying a decent campaign and he’ll look to move into Saturday at the expense of Jiri Brejcha before we reach the halfway point of the afternoon with potentially the best match of the session as Florian Hempel takes on Alan Soutar.
Two European players bring us into the second half of the afternoon when Krzysztof Ratajski looks to get back to the levels he showed a year ago when he faces Madars Razma before Gabriel Clemens will look to continue his good recent form when he takes on Brendan Dolan for whom the upcoming World Championship could be key if he doesn’t win a few matches prior to then. Martin Lukeman takes on Callan Rydz in the penultimate match in the afternoon before Joe Cullen plays Pavel Drtil to round off the session.
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Evening Session
We open up the evening session with Luke Woodhouse looking to make hay when he goes up against the Finland star Marko Kantele. When they are done James Wade faces the home player in Daniel Markovsky before Mike De Decker plays his first stage match since he was crowned the World Grand Prix champion on Sunday night. Brett Claydon is the man hoping there will be a comedown. Nathan Aspinall takes us into the halfway point of the evening. He faces another home player in Michal Smejda.
The pick of the first round matches gets us going in the second half of the evening when Dimitri Van den Bergh looks to build on his run to the semi-final of the World Grand Prix when he faces Jonny Clayton. Daryl Gurney took care of Michael van Gerwen in Leicester and he’ll hope to go double Dutch when he takes on Raymond van Barneveld. Peter Wright begins his title defence when he takes to the stage for the penultimate match in the evening. Cameron Menzies is his opposition before the first round concludes with Kevin Doets meeting Michael Smith.
Betting
Cameron Menzies is having an excellent season on the floor but that hasn’t really translated onto the stages, as we saw at the World Grand Prix a couple of weeks ago when he lost to Dave Chisnall without winning a leg in the first round. That will come at some point but Menzies posted on social media about how negative he felt on the stage and that makes me think that the odds against on Peter Wright to come out on top in the all-Scottish battle is on the big side.
Wright hasn’t had his best year by any stretch of the imagination but he has still won a European Tour event this year. He seems to keep getting priced up based on his Premier League form but while he isn’t anything like his peak form, he is playing much better than he was then so I don’t really get this price. Add in that Wright will be motivated to go well here because he is defending the title and I really like the look of the champion in this one.
Tips
Back P.Wright to beat C.Menzies for a 3/10 stake at 2.04 with Unibet
