The quarter finals of the World Matchplay begin inside the Winter Gardens in Blackpool on Thursday evening when the two matches in the top half of the draw are played out on what should be another good night of darts.
We are up to the best of 31 legs for these quarter finals so there is plenty of time for the cream to rise to the top. On show we have the world champion, two former winners of this event and a dangerous outsider toeing the oche.
Ross Smith vs James Wade
The opening quarter final of the tournament sees the former European Championship winner Ross Smith looking to make it through to a first semi-final in one of the elite events in the sport when he takes on the 2007 winner here in James Wade.
Smith has come through against a couple of top opponents so far in Josh Rock and Gerwyn Price and done it pretty impressively. In the first game he relied on his finishing and then in the second one he caught a real groove on the 60 and powered past Price with a barrage of 180s and that bodes very well for him here. Wade hasn’t had quite as impressive a CV this week. Danny Noppert was no more than ordinary while Nathan Aspinall was clearly injured. Wade played well enough and did what he needed to do but you sense that averages of 95.91 and 93.41 aren’t going to get him much further. You get the feeling that this match is in the hands of Ross Smith and the fact he has won a match when he didn’t score particularly well by his standards is certainly encouraging. If you look at the nine dart average where Smith has posted totals of 104.36 and 119.23 to date compared to 97.31 and 102.61 and Wade is going to be a dart or more behind in most legs by the time we get to the finishing part of the legs so he is either going to need to take out a bunch of three figure checkouts or hope that Smith misses a number of doubles or show a dramatic improvement. The first of those options just isn’t sustainable over 31 legs and the middle one is a risk so barring a good five percent on his scoring I don’t see how Wade stays close here let alone win. I’ll take Smith to cover a 2.5 leg handicap in this one.
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Luke Humphries vs Dimitri Van den Bergh
The pick of the opening night of quarter finals is the second one onto the stage which is a repeat of the controversial UK Open final from back in March as the winner of that tournament, Dimitri Van den Bergh, takes on the world champion Luke Humphries.
That final in Minehead got controversial when Van den Bergh visibly slowed the pace of the action right down, much to the annoyance of Humphries who allowed it to get into his head and in the end to get the better of him. Humphries will be prepared for those tactics this time but being prepared for it and combatting it are two totally different things and it will be interesting to see how he copes with it this time around. Van den Bergh has been the outsider for both of his matches this week but he has come through with relative comfort and while he has been nothing like as solid as Humphries statistically, if he can get the world champion out of his rhythm then the difference between the two could easily merge. I suspect Humphries will come out of the traps all guns blazing here and look to build up a lead that puts any tactics out of play. That said, Van den Bergh is good enough to hold his own so this one is a fascinating prospect to watch but I’m not really sure it is much of a betting proposition.
Tips
Back R.Smith (-2.5 legs) to beat J.Wade for a 3/10 stake at 1.85 with Betfair
