The second day of the Players Championship Finals sees the 32 remaining men whittled down to the last eight as two rounds of action take place across the two sessions of play inside Butlin’s at Minehead on Saturday.
We’ve seen some big names leave the tournament in the opening round and if history is anything to go by the shocks will keep coming on Saturday. We won’t be able to preview the last 16 in the evening session but we can look at the second round in the afternoon.
Main Stage
There are eight matches on the main stage on Saturday afternoon and we get going with the World Series finalist Dirk van Duijvenbode. He has a meeting with the former champion here in Daryl Gurney. Dimitri Van den Bergh is next onto the stage. He was due to meet Michael Smith in this round but Ritchie Edhouse is in his way instead. Two former world champions meet in the third game of the afternoon when Rob Cross meets Gary Anderson before we hit the halfway mark in proceedings with the European champion Ross Smith going up against Jonny Clayton in another good looking clash.
Luke Humphries is now the highest seed left in the tournament after the demise of Damon Heta on the opening day. He takes on Mike de Decker to begin the second half of the afternoon and then Danny Noppert goes back onto the stage on which he won the UK Open earlier in the year. He takes on James Wade who has also won the UK Open here in the past. The penultimate match of the afternoon sees Cameron Menzies facing Michael van Gerwen before the session concludes with Joe Cullen facing Kim Huybrechts.
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Stage Two
It is the final day of action over on Stage Two on Saturday and it begins with Ricardo Pietreczko, the man who put the number one seed Damon Heta out in the first round, taking on Callan Rydz before Andrew Gilding goes up against Keane Barry. The pick of the matches on this stage comes along in the third match of the day as Krzysztof Ratajski goes up against the former Grand Slam of Darts champion Jose de Sousa. The halfway mark is reached with Martin Schindler going up against the talented Chris Dobey.
Ryan Joyce put out the world number one Gerwyn Price in the first round and his reward is a meeting against a Jermaine Wattimena who has shown some decent signs of form in recent times. Martijn Kleermaker had a good win in the first round too when he took care of Nathan Aspinall. He faces Matt Campbell on Saturday afternoon with the penultimate match on this session seeing Dave Chisnall facing Scott Williams. The action concludes with Ryan Searle going up against Jamie Hughes.
Betting
I’ll go with one bet over the course of the afternoon and it comes over on Stage Two where I think the odds against on Jermaine Wattimena is a touch on the high side in his clash against Ryan Joyce. Joyce had a great win against Gerwyn Price on Friday but he has only put successive wins together in one of his last six tournaments and if we are being brutally honest he had plenty of crowd assistance in beating Price after Joyce himself had missed a bunch of match darts. He isn’t a stranger to failing at the finishing line either.
Wattimena plodded along for much of the year but the last month or so he has started to find his form again having made the quarter finals of the last two regular Players Championship tournaments where the likes of Josh Rock, Krzysztof Ratajski, Daryl Gurney and Raymond van Barneveld were among his victims and he reached the knockout stages of the Grand Slam with a win over Damon Heta along the way. Confidence is a big thing in this game and Wattimena has it. Joyce rarely convinces me as a favourite so I’ll go with the Dutchman here.
Tips
Back J.Wattimena to beat R.Joyce for a 3/10 stake at 2.10 with Coral
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