The opening day of the UK Open saw the qualifiers mingle with the big boys and at the end of it all we are left with the 32 men going forward to do battle for the rest of the weekend. After Saturday’s play we will have just eight men remaining in the tournament.
Saturday afternoon’s session of play will see the last 32 being played out in full with the last 16 that evening and with the open draw we’re guaranteed some big matches. We know we’re getting a big match in the last 32 because Phil Taylor and Raymond Barneveld’s names came out alongside each other in a heavyweight tussle.
That is the standout match on Saturday afternoon while it will also be a big occasion for the two remaining pub qualifiers. They drew Gary Anderson and Michael van Gerwen in a moment they’ll be able to look back on in years to come.
Other high profile matches in the afternoon session see Simon Whitlock taking on Benito van de Pas, sadly both outright picks of mine so I’m going to lose one there. Peter Wright also has high profile opposition in the form of Terry Jenkins while Stephen Bunting vs Jamie Caven should be a good match.
Unfortunately from a betting point of view the coverage wasn’t the best on the opening day both on television or on the internet and while we were given the scores of each match we didn’t get much other data to gauge how everyone is playing.
That, along with a pretty ordinary draw in terms of genuine 50/50 matches makes betting quite difficult on Saturday and there isn’t really a single price which stands out much so I’m going to go a little out of the box and put together a little treble which I think will come in for some interest in the session.
I’m going to start with Michael Smith who held his nerve to see off Daryl Gurney in the previous round. Yes Gurney missed three darts to win the match in the deciding leg but the way he is playing at the minute Smith will have to have played well to come through that. I see him being too good for a largely limited Stuart Kellett.
Peter Wright averaged over a ton in seeing off Steve Beaton on Friday night and a repeat of that should be too good for Terry Jenkins with the way Jenkins has been missing doubles. Wright has won six of their last seven meetings and is generally getting something of the wood over Jenkins at the minute so over a 17 leg distance I would expect the colourful one to come through there.
I’ll complete the treble with Stephen Bunting. He faces Jamie Caven here and he does so knowing he has won their last three meetings and two of those were last year when Bunting’s form was in a real dip. He’s out of that now and playing well again and over this distance I think he’ll have too much scoring power for a Caven who has reached the level he usually finds the going a bit tough from.
Back M.Smith to beat S.Kellett x P.Wright to beat T.Jenkins x S.Bunting to beat J.Caven for a 4/10 stake at 2.69 with Paddy Power
Back them here:
