Sunday 4 November 2018

World Series quarter finals

Well, that's another event that Michael van Gerwen isn't winning - I wanted to see in this one how Barney's doing, and ignoring the fact that he should have been out in the last sixteen but for Raymond Smith choking the game away in a deciding leg after Barney hit the most perfectly timed 180 of the year, he's looking good - you don't knock out the world number one without playing decently. He'll play Wadey, who took care of surprise package Jamie Lewis, a result which, combined with Dave Chisnall losing to Michael Smith (who faces Gerwyn Price in the other semi), locks Hopp and Ratajski into the Grand Slam, a tournament I'm much more interested in seeing Barney in.

It's the final weekend of the Development Tour - Luke Humphries bagged the first (and his eighth of all time) over Bradley Brooks, with George Killington going deep to keep his chances of Ally Pally going nicely. The second one went to Berry van Peer, who took out Geert Nentjes in a deciding leg, really pleased to see Berry do this after what's been a real struggle of recent times. Today, Dimitri van den Bergh took the win in the first one, over Geert Nentjes again - that score, by the looks of it, lifting him over Killington provisionally for the last qualification spot (Evetts has the first as of right now with Humphries, Schindler and van den Bergh having qualified by right) - Meikle kept slim hopes alive with a last sixteen run, but he basically needed a win in event 20 and he ran into Humphries early and went out. Killington's in a bit of an easier section of the draw right now - Nentjes plays van Tergouw, with a possible Humphries two rounds later, before the two of them would collide if they each got to the quarters. Evetts is in an OK section and should get enough to book the first spot in the worlds - his half of the draw looking a hell of a lot easier with everyone mentioned being in the other half, along with de Zwaan, Cole (who's not drawing completely dead for the worlds if he can bink the event), Dimitri, Heffernan, Brooks as well as Murschell, who's made a remarkable recovery to play this event.

Also, Wes Newton's somehow got himself into Lakeside, with an international spot (supposedly one of the Asian ones) going missing. I do hope that wasn't a case of the BDO pissing about for so long to confirm the event that the qualifier couldn't affordably book travel or something like that, but it's very much a mess regardless.

Grand Slam qualifier takes place tomorrow - I ran down the best players in terms of points per turn a few posts ago, but the eight players who are highest ranked in the FRH rankings who aren't there are Gurney, Webster, Chisnall, Cullen, Adrian Lewis, King, West and Bunting. That'd be a decent set of players, but you've also got Beaton, Wilson, Henderson, Huybrechts, Kyle Anderson, Wattimena, Klaasen, Jamie Lewis, de Zwaan, Norris, Lennon, North if you're looking at the top 20 - there's going to be some big names missing out on it. Then just imagine of the players that aren't there already that I haven't listed - the likes of Reyes, van der Voort, Dobey, Schindler, Noppert, O'Connor, Mansell, Clemens, Searle etc - they've all got the ability to go really deep and get through. It's going to be brutal. How do they seed the thing though? Are the eight top seeds just based on those who qualified automatically? If Gurney wins through the qualifier, does he get a seed based on that he's still top 5 in the world? Who knows, but hopefully they do the draw fairly sharpish so I can do previews in good time.

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