Monday 5 February 2018

UK Open qualifiers weekend 1

This year I don't think I'll do what I did last year and give explicit props for best/worst performances on a given weekend, I'll just look through the results and say what did and didn't surprise me:

- Michael van Gerwen and Michael Smith both had excellent weekends, chopping the titles between them with Smith getting a final to go with his win yesterday, good to see early season form for Smith.
- Rob Cross going 0-3 is hugely surprising. Cadby you can perhaps understand the loss to as on any given day he can outplay anyone, but Jamie Hughes and Ryan Meikle?
- Similarly odd results for Barney, seemingly not playing the third qualifier but busting to Ratajski twice is odd.
- Good run to the final for Darren Webster to lock up a third round spot, sixth leg of the final looked to be the killer where he couldn't hold in eighteen darts but he's got to be happy enough with that score.
- No signs that Benito is returning to form any time soon, three first round busts to Kantele, Mansell and Newell winning just six legs combined, oh wow.
- No super deep runs, but Mervyn King had a consistent weekend, putting four grand in the bank which'll be good enough to go straight into the money.
- Another final for Zoran Lerchbacher, which should set him up very nicely for the season to come. Bumps him up close to Matchplay spots as it stands, pity his previous final looks to get removed just before the cutoff.
- Dave Pallett with a nice semi final should restore some confidence after losing his tour card, probably still needs a last 32 in one of the remaining events to get straight to the money though.
- Jamie Hughes is likely already there though, a last 16 and a quarter final combining for a very solid weekend.
- Matt Edgar is also probably in, with £250 less than Hughes after two last 16 runs and a mincash, missing out on the last 16 with £3250 would be a bit surprising.
- Dave Prins is also going to be there, who saw that coming?

Elsewhere, Andy Hamilton and Alex Roy are among the amateur qualifiers for the UK Open as we aim to repeat 2007, while Mark McGeeney retained the Dutch Open, getting some revenge for the worlds by beating Glen Durrant in the final. Remarkable achievement to win this back to back given the huge fields and short format, there's so many potential landmines to step on.

I've looked at that dartconnect site, and my god, the information they've got there is incredible - it basically has everything I currently put into my database for TV events, except for floor events. This should be hugely useful to get lots and lots of data, although how to get it efficiently is the big question. There's been over 700 matches played this weekend!

Updated FRH rankings:

1 Michael van Gerwen
2 Rob Cross
3 Peter Wright
4 Phil Taylor
5 Daryl Gurney
6 Gary Anderson
7 Mensur Suljovic
8 Simon Whitlock
9 Michael Smith (UP 1)
10 Dave Chisnall (DOWN 1)
11 Raymond van Barneveld
12 Gerwyn Price
13 Alan Norris
14 Darren Webster (UP 2)
15 Ian White (DOWN 1)
16 James Wade (DOWN 1)
17 Kim Huybrechts (UP 1)
18 Benito van de Pas (DOWN 1)
19 Jelle Klaasen
20 Joe Cullen

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