The first European Tour event of the darting calendar is upon us and takes place over Valentines weekend in Venray in Holland as 48 of the PDC’s best compete in the Dutch Darts Masters.
These European events are getting bigger and bigger by the year and the standard is really increasing which usually makes for a very competitive and high quality weekend of darts. I’m sure this weekend will be no different.
This particular tournament might be lacking the likes of Phil Taylor and Raymond Barneveld but it still contains some really strong names including the top three in the world in the form of Michael van Gerwen, Gary Anderson and Adrian Lewis and all three will be eyeing up the tasty £25,000 first prize.
It is a credit to the venue and the tournament organisers that in between big weeks in the Premier League such an array of talent have committed to the event and what it has given us is a very competitive top half of the draw.
Robert Thornton was in this section but he has pulled out with the illness which stopped him competing in Newcastle on Thursday night but there are still the likes of Michael van Gerwen, Dave Chisnall, Gary Anderson, James Wade and Kim Huybrechts in a top half which looks like a mini tournament in itself.
When you factor in dangerous qualifiers like Mervyn King, Mark Webster, Jamie Lewis and Dave Pallett are also in that half of the draw you can see how we are almost guaranteed some top notch darts this weekend.
Given the strength of that top half I don’t really want to take anyone in that part of the draw outright especially given that van Gerwen and Anderson looked so good in Newcastle on Thursday night. Instead I’ll head down to the bottom half of the draw.
That isn’t to say the bottom half is of a much lower quality because it isn’t but it doesn’t look as competitive throughout. Michael Smith, Peter Wright, Adrian Lewis and Jelle Klaasen were all World Championship quarter finalists at least at the beginning of the year and they will all fancy the job here.
I don’t want to get too involved in the outright market here because it is early in the year and we haven’t got the greatest amount of form lines to go on so I’m only going to take one person from the off this weekend and it is the current Premier League table topper.
That is of course Adrian Lewis. There aren’t many comfortable parts of the draw but Lewis does seem to have one. He should come through the first round against the winner of Paul Milford and Remco van Eijden easily enough and Terry Jenkins, his seeded second round opponent isn’t as tough as it could be.
Peter Wright could be waiting in the quarter final and that is never easy but we’ve seen plenty in recent times that Lewis has the upper hand when they meet so I’m expecting Lewis to make the semi-final.
We know he holds the cards against Michael Smith, who he is seeded to meet there, too so Lewis really has found a nice draw this week. 9/1 might not be the biggest price on paper but it has the potential to look very big come Sunday evening.
Back A.Lewis to win Dutch Darts Masters (e/w) for a 2/10 stake at 10.00 with Boylesports (1/2 1-2)
