The second round of the World Matchplay gets up and running inside the Winter Gardens in Blackpool on Tuesday evening when the top half of the draw plays down to the quarter finals in the summer showpiece.
The first round saw some excellent darts thrown and with the format going up to the best of 21 and everyone settled into the tournament now we should see the standard improve on what looks like a competitive night of darts.
Gerwyn Price vs Ross Smith
The opening match of the second round will see the former finalist Gerwyn Price continuing his bid for a first World Matchplay title when he takes on a Ross Smith who was very impressive in the opening round and who has a TV title to his name so knows how to perform on the stage.
Smith took care of Josh Rock in the first round with a really convincing display. What I liked most about his win was that we didn’t see the burst of 180s that he is famous for so he had to rely on his finishing and that bodes well for him because you would imagine that his scoring will come along. To be fair to Price, he was impressive in the first round as well with a convincing win against Daryl Gurney in the opening match of the tournament which I always think is the hardest spot to perform well in. If both play like they did in the opening round then this should be a close match but if either are off it the other could run away with it. As you would imagine the 180s line is inflated so there isn’t really anything I fancy here.
Nathan Aspinall vs James Wade
The second match of the evening will see Nathan Aspinall continuing his title defence when he goes up against the former winner James Wade in what the bookmakers have as the tightest match of the night in terms of the odds.
Aspinall performed a lot better than he was expected to in the first round when you consider the injuries he is battling. There was evidence of those issues in the match with his arm all taped up and you wonder how many legs he has in him this week before he can’t go no more at full pelt. Wade was Wade in the first round where he was solid in the scoring without being spectacular and then mopped up the finishes when he needed to and you would probably favour him here just because we don’t know if Aspinall can do a best of 21 so soon after the first round. I am a little surprised that you can get 5/6 on Wade to win this because he could well win even if Aspinall is on it because the defending champion is prone to missing a lot of doubles and you can’t so that against ‘The Machine’. Wade absolutely loves it here and with the doubts over Aspinall I think the former champion has to be the bet to beat the current one.
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Luke Humphries vs Stephen Bunting
The penultimate match of the evening will see the world champion Luke Humphries continuing his quest for a first World Matchplay title when he takes on The Masters winner Stephen Bunting, who himself will have eyes on winning this tournament for the first time.
Humphries was absolutely brilliant in hammering a game Ricardo Pietreczko in the first round and if he has that form with him here then he is going to be very tough to stop. You would imagine there will be a slight drop off and if there is then Bunting could well cause Humphries some issues. The Bullet did beat Humphries on his way to winning the title at The Masters but Humphries has extracted revenge in the UK Open since then. Bunting does have the scoring power to cause problems for Humphries but the question is whether his doubling will be good enough to keep with the world champion. He was 12/27 against Ryan Joyce in the first round which is solid enough and with a good start from Bunting here we could see a classic. The over 180s tempted me here but we would probably need a close match for the cover and I’m not as convinced that we’ll get it as I’d like to be to pull the trigger.
Jonny Clayton vs Dimitri Van den Bergh
The closer for the Tuesday action might well turn out to be the pick of the matches as the finalist of last year, Jonny Clayton, goes up against the Belgium number one and former champion of this event in Dimitri Van den Bergh.
Van den Bergh was one of the few seeded players in the first round who was an outsider to win the game but the UK Open champion showed everyone why he won that tournament and held Martin Schindler at bay before pulling away to get the better of him. Clayton went into the event buoyed by winning the Players Championship tournament last week and looked like a confident man in always hosting Raymond Barneveld far enough away to be comfortable before eventually getting the job done. If both play like they did in the previous round, and there is nothing to suggest that they won’t be they played at a level that we come to expect from them, then this should be a really close match. Neither has that insane scoring power but both are consistent heavy scorers and they are similar in the finishing so it is hard to see this being won by two clear breaks of throw. That makes me think over 18.5 legs is the way to play this one.
Tips
Back J.Wade to beat N.Aspinall for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Boylesports
Back him here:
Back J.Clayton vs D.Van den Bergh – Over 18.5 legs for a 3/10 stake at 2.10 with Betfair
