The quarter finals of the World Matchplay conclude inside the Winter Gardens in Blackpool on Friday evening when we find out which two men will compete in the semi-final in the bottom half of the draw on Saturday night.
We have the world champion, a former winner of the World Championship and two other TV event winners on the cast list on Friday night and over the extended 31 leg format we should be in for plenty more excellent darts.
Luke Littler vs Andrew Gilding
The first of the two quarter finals on Friday night sees the tournament favourite and world champion Luke Littler going up against the former UK Open winner Andrew Gilding with both men looking to make the last four for the first time.
Gilding might have an edge on Littler in this match given that this is the second year in succession that he has made the last eight on this stage. He wasn’t disgraced in a 16-10 defeat to Michael van Gerwen last year and he’ll hope to go six legs better here. Clearly that won’t be an easy task against Littler but we have seen two sides of the youngster this week. He was impeccably good in the opening round against Ryan Searle but for 10 legs of his second round match against Wattimena he was second best by a distance. He deserves credit for turning a 7-2 deficit around but he won’t want to be in that position again. Littler changed his fortunes when he ditched the D16, D8 corner of the board and started setting up his favourite tops and D10 to finish. It would be folly if he doesn’t start on that side of the board here and that could spell trouble for Gilding, however Goldfinger has beaten Littler on stage at the European Championship last season. That was a race to six not 16 though. It is hard to see Littler not winning this but Gilding has thrown a pair of 100+ averages this week with 16 180s in his two matches and checkout rates of 50% and 52%, which in truth he has made look quite easy. There is nothing to suggest Gilding won’t give this a good go. I do think he comes up short but the 8/11 on him averaging over 95.5 feels a big price. I’ve regularly mentioned how the Littler opponent constantly has an inflated average because the world champion is down to a double or a manageable checkout after four visits so his opponent in those legs will only have scoring visits. I’m not sure Gilding gets the chance to miss many doubles here but he isn’t missing many anyway. That average feels within his range.
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Josh Rock vs Gerwyn Price
It isn’t very often that Luke Littler doesn’t get the top billing on a card in the darts world these days but that has been reserved for the last of the quarter finals which puts together a rematch of half of the World Cup final as Josh Rock takes on Gerwyn Price.
Rock had the last laugh in Germany when he partnered Daryl Gurney to success in the World Cup and he’ll be hoping to follow that up with another win over the Welshman here. Price seems to have taken that loss personally though because since then he has won pretty much everything going and he has cruised into the quarter final, easing past Chris Dobey in the second round and not really finding too much in the way of resistance from Gurney himself in the first round. Rock has struggled to live up to the hype this week. He was indifferent in beating a Ross Smith who never showed up until it was too late in the opening round and couldn’t get going at all against Michael van Gerwen in the second one, although to be fair to the man from Northern Ireland, when push came to shove and he had to find his best darts they were there for him. He will need them from the off here but the fact people are big on Price and not so much him might well help him out. I hope it does because I am on Rock at 7/2 to win this match having backed him outright before a dart was thrown. I’m not one to ditch the girl I took to the dance so I’ll hope that Rock can find his best form and Price dips in his and gives us a second outright payout guaranteed in as many nights.
Tips
Back A.Gilding – Over 95.5 3 dart average for a 3/10 stake at 1.73 with William Hill
Back him here:
