A bumper final day of darts in the Grand Slam at Wolverhampton will see the title decided on Sunday as the final four men face coming through two best of 31 leg matches in the day to be crowned the champion.
The four men for whom that prospect is still a possibility are Michael van Gerwen, Michael Smith, Raymond Barneveld and Phil Taylor. They play the semi-finals in the afternoon with the winners coming back to battle for the title in the evening.
The opening semi-final is the battle of the Michael’s where van Gerwen is a very warm favourite as you would expect. The Dutchman produced one of the most scintillating quarter final performances we’ve ever seen on the big stage when he bashed Kim Huybrechts aside by a 16-3 scoreline.
Michael Smith’s performance was overshadowed by the way van Gerwen played on Saturday night but he played really well himself against a dangerous opponent in Adrian Lewis and having played both Jackpot and Dave Chisnall in the knockout stages and survived to tell the tale nobody can deny Smith his spot in this match.
Bookmakers have van Gerwen winning this match by a landslide but I’m not so sure that will be the case. I actually think this will be a close semi-final and I wouldn’t be surprised if Smith wins it.
That might sound stupid after the way MVG played on Saturday night but if you can get him under pressure he will miss doubles and then it is up to you to step in. The way to get the Dutchman under pressure is with heavy power scoring and Smith certainly has that in his locker.
Smith has beaten MVG in two European Tour finals in the last 15 months or so which gives him the confidence of knowing he can win and I think he can make it to double figures if not win the match.
Given how well both score it makes perfect sense to get stuck into the over 17.5 180s here. Smith nailed 10 of them against Lewis while MVG hit 12 in his win over Huybrechts. We should see 18 in this one.
The bottom half of the draw has killed me all week so far. I’ve just not been able to get a nice feel for it and that remains the case in the other semi-final. I kind of fancy Taylor to brush Barney aside but then if we think back to his performance against Jenkins that puts me off taking a big handicap.
In truth the prices and the handicap lines for this match look about right so I’m going to leave the game alone and hope it is the classic it could be between two of the greatest players to throw a dart.
Back M.Smith (+6.5 legs) to beat M.van Gerwen for a 4/10 stake at 1.83 with Ladbrokes
Back M.Smith vs M.van Gerwen – Over 17.5 180s for a 4/10 stake at 1.83 with Boylesports
Ps With hardly any time between the semi-finals and the final I won’t have the chance to post a blog about the final but I will tweet any bets I have on my twitter feed (@kevshat) with some reasoning and I will count them as official bets on the blog.
