The first round of the Winmau World Masters concludes inside the Marshall Arena in Milton Keynes on Friday night when the eight matches in the bottom half of the draw take place on what looks like another decent evening of darts.
It is the night where the world champion Luke Littler will make his debut in the competition while the likes of Michael van Gerwen, Jonny Clayton and Dave Chisnall are among those who will be looking to entertain the crowd.
First Four Matches
We begin with the World Grand Prix champion Mike De Decker on show when he faces off against a man who is no stranger to going deep into a TV tournament in James Wade. De Decker has had plenty to say in recent times and now it is his darts that need to do the talking. When they are done Dave Chisnall meets Cameron Menzies in a good looking game before Jonny Clayton takes to the stage to go up against the German number one Martin Schindler. We reach the halfway point of the evening with a clash between two former UK Open winners when Nathan Aspinall meets Andrew Gilding.
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Later Four Matches
We get going in the second half of the session with the former winner of this event, Chris Dobey, taking on the heavy hitting Ryan Searle before Luke Littler appears in the UK as world champion for the first time when he takes on a former Lakeside winner in Andy Baetens. Michael van Gerwen will look to get his Winmau World Masters campaign off to a positive start when he takes on a Bradley Brooks who having gone back to Q-School to get his tour card back has come through qualifying to take his place in the field. The final match of the first round might turn out to be the pick of them as Gary Anderson takes on the UK Open champion Dimitri Van den Bergh.
Betting
There isn’t a huge amount that I want to get stuck into in this short format. I think the better bets will come over the weekend in that regard but Cameron Menzies looks like a good bet to see off Dave Chisnall at the prices. Chisnall was struggling with injury at the back end of last year and his World Championship campaign was short and not very sweet as a result of that. This will be the first time he has played competitively since that World Championship defeat too.
The last time we saw Cameron Menzies on our screens was that tough to watch match at the World Championship where he had a bit of a meltdown at the end of it but he quickly clarified on social media that he was having a few issues off the board which we won’t bring up here but hopefully that is behind him. Although it was behind closed doors, Menzies beat Gian van Veen in the final qualifying round to get into this tournament and averaged 106 in the process but the fact that he has experienced the format this week and that he looks in good form has to be a positive. At the prices I’ll take the Scot here.
Tips
Back C.Menzies to beat D.Chisnall for a 3/10 stake at 2.00 with Unibet
