The opening night of the WDF World Darts Championship sees a whole bunch of matches taking place in the first round of the draw as the Lakeside Country Club opens its doors to some of the best players the organisation has to offer.
The six men’s matches on show on Friday night are the best of five sets while the women’s match will be a contest over the best of three sets as the tournament gets underway on what looks to be a pretty good night of darts.
First Three Matches
We open up the tournament with the 2023 semi-finalist Dennis Nilsson taking to the stage to face off against the Canadian player Shane Sakchekapo for a shot at the fourth seed James Beeton in the second round. When they are done we will find out the second round opponent of the top seed Jimmy van Schie when Alex Williams takes on Romeo Grbavac who will be looking to make the most of his opportunity after replacing Boris Krcmar in the field. We then start the women’s tournament when the Japanese player Mayumi Ouchi faces Nina Lech-Musialska in a play-in qualifying match for a spot in the main draw after a bit of a faux pas in the qualifiers for this.
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Later Four Matches
We go back to the men’s draw for the final four matches of the opening night of the tournament. We go right to the bottom of the bracket where the World Open and recent Malta Masters winner Cliff Prior takes on the Canadian player Clint Clarkson for a shot at Raymond Smith in round 2. Two outsiders meet in the next match of the night when Kevin Luke faces off against Sybren Gijbels with David Pallett awaiting the winner. The penultimate match of the night sees the World Open finalist Haruki Muramatsu facing Vince Tipple in a clash that Matt Clark will be interested in as he faces the winner. Shane McGuirk gets his title defence up and running in the final game of the opening night when he takes on the Finnish qualifier Petri Rasmus to round off the action.
Betting
I like a couple of bets on the opening night of the tournament. I was going to leave the match between Alex Williams and Romeo Grbavac alone but the Croatian has drifted to a price that I can’t really ignore. There is little in the recent form of Williams to make me think that he will be any more than competitive here. Grbavac didn’t make the main draw off his own steam which might be why he is drifting but he has been in and around the PDC scene in terms of playing in the World Cup where he was part of the team which took care of Wales on their way to the quarter finals. He played the PDC event last year and averaged 97.92 in defeat to Callan Rydz despite only hitting 22% of his doubles. That checkout ratio is a concern but that scoring level should have him as a warmer favourite than he is here so I’ll take the Croat in this one.
The other bet comes in the form of Cliff Prior who I expect to be too good for Clint Clarkson when they meet. Prior has had a really good run of form in recent times. In the last month or so he has won the World Open and the Malta Masters and reached the semi-final of the World Masters where the classy Jeff Smith was too good for him but that has built a lot of good stage experience and I expect that to make a difference here. Clarkson failed to come out of his group in the recent World Masters, winning four legs in his three matches and having a top average of 79.11. That sort of level shouldn’t have him particularly competitive here so I fancy the experienced Prior to win and cover a 1.5 set handicap in the process.
Tips
Back R.Grbavac to beat A.Williams for a 3/10 stake at 1.91 with Bet365
Back C.Prior (-1.5 sets) to beat C.Clarkson for a 4/10 stake at 1.73 with Bet365
