The World Grand Prix gets underway on Monday night when the bottom half of the draw plays out the first round of the competition on what is likely to be a tense evening inside the Morningside Arena in Leicester.
Sometimes in these big TV events we have to wait for the big names to come out to play but that isn’t the case with this one and with there only being four seeds in this half of the draw we have some tasty matches over the nervy format of the best of three sets.
First Four Matches
We get underway with a battle of two men who will be wanting to go deep in the tournament as Callan Rydz and Krzysztof Ratajski look to make up for disappointing campaigns when they meet to get the competition started. When they are done the former finalist Brendan Dolan will be on show. He will go up against the former world finalist Stephen Bunting who doesn’t have a bad record in this event in what could be one of the matches of the night.
When they are done one of the stars of the season on the European circuit takes to the stage when Luke Humphries gets his campaign underway when he goes up against a Chris Dobey who on his day can challenge anyone. We reach the halfway point of the evening with arguably the pick of the matches in the first round when former World Matchplay champion Dimitri Van den Bergh takes on the man who has twice been to the final of this competition and won the Belgian Darts Open last weekend in Dave Chisnall.
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Later Four Matches
The second half of the evening is where the seeded players come out to start their tournament and the first seed on show is the defending champion Jonny Clayton. He has a really tricky test to negotiate in the form of the 2020 finalist of this event in Dirk van Duijvenbode, who narrowly missed out on winning the World Series of Darts Finals a couple of weeks ago. The world champion Peter Wright is the next seed into the stage. He has a tough looking clash with Kim Huybrechts to negotiate.
The final two matches of the night are absolute pearlers in their own right with two superstars of the modern era meeting in the penultimate game of the evening when the five time champion Michael van Gerwen goes up against a Gary Anderson for whom this is one of few titles which doesn’t feature on his CV. The final match of the evening sees Jose de Sousa taking on a suddenly revived Adrian Lewis in a great way to end the session.
Betting
There are always shocks in the first round of this tournament and Peter Wright has experienced a number of them. He has competed in this event on 10 previous occasions and bitten the dust in the first round six times. The six players to have beaten him at that stage are Phil Taylor, Wes Newton, Dave Chisnall, Brendan Dolan, Ryan Joyce and Rob Cross. You could argue there are some nasty draws there but there are some favourable ones which he has bungled. He meets Kim Huybrechts on Monday evening and although Huybrechts isn’t the most experienced in this tournament, he has played eight times and has made the quarter final before. That was in 2016 and in the second round he averaged 98.47 so he can clearly deliver some good darts in this format, which not everyone can. Wright won a European Tour event last month but he still doesn’t look convincing to me whereas Huybrechts comes in here off the back of a win over Michael van Gerwen in Belgium last weekend. Interestingly, the Belgian has won the last three meetings between these two and done so 6-0, 6-1 and 6-0. I think he’s value to dump the world champion out here.
Adrian Lewis has been lightly raced recently with just one tournament since the World Matchplay but that came in Belgium last weekend where he made it through to the Sunday before being beaten by Danny Noppert in the last 16. In the first round of that event he averaged a shade under 103 and immediately prior to the World Matchplay, where Michael van Gerwen outlasted him in the first round, he won a Players Championship where he took care of Jonny Clayton and Nathan Aspinall along the way. Lewis meets Jose de Sousa in the final match of the night and de Sousa might well be there for the taking. We know he can have a mare on his finishing at the best of times. He has gone well on the European Tour circuit over the last month but last week in Belgium he had to survive four match darts to avoid losing to Ross Smith in his first match and then only averaged 86 in losing to Dave Chisnall in the quarter final. The Portuguese has played this event twice. He lost to Devon Petersen 2-0 in the first round in 2020 and then to Jonny Clayton in the second round last year. His win was against Glen Durrant who averaged just 58.02 while de Sousa didn’t inspire with a 78.07 average. You can pick holes in de Sousa’s form so Lewis feels a big price.
Tips
Back K.Huybrechts to beat P.Wright for a 3/10 stake at 3.75 with Bet365
Back A.Lewis to beat J.de Sousa for a 3/10 stake at 2.38 with Betway
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