While we wait for the PDC World Darts Championship to get underway, the WDF hold their own World Championship which begins at the famous Lakeside Country Club in Frimley Green on Friday night as the stars of that organisation do battle.
Shane McGuirk came out on top in the men’s tournament a year ago and he is in the field looking to make a successful defence of his title but there are plenty of recognisable names in the draw aiming to get the trophy from him.
Recent Winners
2024 – Shane McGuirk
2023 – Andy Baetens
2022 – Neil Duff
The Format
48 men have made it into the draw. 16 seeded bypass the first round with the other 32 players playing a best of five set match to take on one of the seeds in round two. The second round and the last 16 will be played over the best of five sets with the quarter finals the best of seven sets. The semi-finals are the best of nine sets and the champion will be determined on the second Sunday over the best of 11 sets. The draw has been pre-determined with a few adjustments after players who qualified for the PDC tournament were removed and every dart will be shown live on the WDF YouTube channel or S4C.
Top Half
As is the case in most tournaments the number one seed is at the top of the draw bracket. This year that is Jimmy van Schie. He is scheduled to meet the talented James Beeton in the semi-final of this competition but six seeds will be looking to stop that from happening. They are the Dutch pair of Corne Groeneveld and Stefan Schroder, the two German players Paul Krohne and Liam Maendl-Lawrance, Benjamin Pratnemer and the classy David Pallett. All of them are entrants in the second round of the competition.
There are 16 players coming into the draw in the first round and they include the defending champion Shane McGuirk who will be hoping to emulate some of the greats of the past and make a successful title defence. Dennis Nilsson is a former semi-finalist here while Marko Kantele, Darren Johnson and Romeo Grbavac all have recent PDC experience. Ryan Hogarth and Caleb Hope are a couple of others who could deliver the goods this week.
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Bottom Half
The number two seed Jason Brandon is the top seed in the bottom half of the draw and if everything goes to the rankings then he will be facing the 2022 champion Neil Duff in what would actually be a really good looking semi-final. The other six seeds who are entering in the second round are Andy Davidson, Matt Clark, the 2024 semi-finalist Francois Schweyen, Thomas Junghans, David Fatum and the dangerous Australian player Raymond Smith who only three years ago made the last 16 of the PDC version of this tournament.
There are plenty more players in this half of the draw and all eyes will be on the teenage sensation Mitchell Lawrie, who if he doesn’t get stage fright, and there is little to suggest that he will, could cause a massive stir this week. Ben Robb, Brian Raman and Haruki Muramatsu all have relatively recent PDC World Championship experience while the likes of Jeffrey Sparidaans, Bradley Kirk, Jim McEwan, Jenson Walker and Johan Engstrom all of the potential to have a big week.
Betting
If you can average in the 90s in this tournament then you have a great chance and when you look at the averages that Mitchell Lawrie is posting, not just in the youth scene where he looks a racing certainty to win the youth event here, but also in winning events such as the Irish Classic, then he is entitled to be right in the mix here. The 15-year-old is in a tough quarter it has to be said but when he won the Irish Open youth event recently he averaged 103.53 in the final, 98.60 in winning that Irish Classic final and 95.46 in the final of the World Masters youth event. Those averages if he can be consistent with them would have him right in the mix. There is already talk that Lawrie will be the next Luke Littler and with those numbers it is hard to dispute that. Littler wouldn’t be 9/1 here and so I’ll take that price on Lawrie.
As an outsider pick I think there could be a little bit of mileage in going with the Swedish player Dennis Nilsson who is an unflappable character and might just run hot enough to go deep in this tournament, as he did when he reached the semi-final here a couple of years ago. He lost to the eventual winner Andy Baetens who subsequently went and secured a PDC tour card a matter of weeks after landing the title here. Last year Nilsson went down in a deciding set to Gary Stone but had that gone the other way Nilsson could have gone on a deep run again. His draw looks a little more comfortable this time around and so at 100/1 there might be some juice in his price.
Tips
Back M.Lawrie to win WDF World Darts Championship (e/w) for a 2/10 stake at 10.00 with BetVictor (1/2 1-2)
Back D.Nilsson to win WDF World Darts Championship (e/w) for a 0.5/10 stake at 101.00 with Spreadex (1/2 1-2)
