The opening day of the inaugural Swiss Darts Trophy sees the qualifiers battling it out over two sessions of action in Basel for the right to progress and have a crack at one of the seeded players in the second round on Saturday.
As well as a spot in the second round being on the line, points towards qualification for the European Championship are also up for grabs on what looks like being a decent day of darts with some very good matches spaced out across the card.
Afternoon Session
The early part of the day might lack some top names but should give us some competitive darts with Karel Sedlacek opening up the show when he meets Jim Williams. When they are done Luke Woodhouse will take on a Wessel Nijman who looks like he is settling in at main tour level now. Krzysztof Ratajski will be third onto the stage for a meeting with the home player Bruno Stockli. We reach the halfway point of the session with a clash between Mike De Decker and Graham Hall.
Madars Razma gets the second part of the afternoon underway when he goes up against a home player in the form of Alex Fehlmann. Andrew Gilding is suddenly going well enough again and he takes on Nandor Pres before a third home player takes to the stage when Roger Hertig meets Ryan Meikle who has qualified for this event. I think the best match of the afternoon has been saved for the last as Callan Rydz and Brendan Dolan wrap up the session.
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Evening Session
The evening session looks a lot better on paper and I’m sure that is how it will play out on the stage too. Ritchie Edhouse will open up the show when he takes on Jermaine Wattimena in a good looking match. Anton Ostlund will look to cause a major upset in the second game of the evening when he meets Dirk van Duijvenbode. The two best matches of the first round then take place when Dimitri Van den Bergh meets James Wade while Joe Cullen and Raymond van Barneveld clash to take us to the halfway point of the session.
We begin the second half of the evening with another good looking game as Jonny Clayton looks to build on some bits of form when he faces Cameron Menzies who has been one of the best players on the floor for a while. Peter Wright will look to get back among the big boys when he meets Richard Veenstra who is no respecter of reputations before Nathan Aspinall takes to the stage in the penultimate game of the night to take on the last home player on show in Marcel Walpen. Michael Smith and Ian White face off to close out the day.
Betting
Cameron Menzies has been absolutely flying on the floor in 2024, reaching a final, two semis and four quarter finals over the course of the year but that hasn’t really translated into runs on the stage yet and I wonder if too much is being made of the floor form for his clash against Jonny Clayton where the Scot is the favourite to win. I’m not so sure we are quite at that stage yet though with Clayton a seasoned campaigner on any PDC stage these days.
His record in the stage events this season probably isn’t what he would have wanted but he has had some horrible draws along the way so I’m not going to hold that against him. Menzies seems to miss doubles on the stage that he just doesn’t seem to miss on the floor and over an 11 leg dash if he misses too many here he’ll be punished. Clayton has won their last two meetings which were fairly recent and only lost in a deciding leg in their other meeting in 2024 so I’m not yet in a position where I can ignore 11/10 on a Clayton win in this matchup.
Tips
Back J.Clayton to beat C.Menzies for a 3/10 stake at 2.10 with Unibet
