Grand Prix final

I didn't post about the semis, mainly because it seemed obvious what was going on - Chisnall and Durrant ought to be tight, and given every set from 1-1 onwards went the distance, it was, while Dobey put up a good fight but was a little bit outmatched by van Gerwen, he got five legs on the board in the first three sets, but I think that third set broke him - if he could have slotted in a 140 after the 180 he hit in the deciding leg to leave a two darter he'd have been very live, van Gerwen getting 108 is something you'd expect to get maybe one in three goes so certainly not a gimmie, as it was a visit of 58 effectively handed the Dutchman the set. Losing the second set as he did as well had to have been horrible, you're throwing for the match and by the time you finally get away, your opponent then steps up and is on a double to force a decider.

So, can Chizzy win it? I want to say yes and no. He's one of the players that is playing well enough that he can threaten, but will he start to have some of the Terry Jenkins always loses the final mentality? It's a long race, and you've got to be on the money on doubles from the get go, but he's not actually doing badly - 12/21 going out yesterday, 11/26 against Aspinall, 8/14 against Price (I'm chucking out the game against Bunting as he wasn't really threatened at all), so 0.1u Chisnall 10/3, hard to gauge set play but if this was a Matchplay final where you need 18 legs to take it (you're going to need 15 here, but with it being sets you'll end up playing more), he's hovering around a one in three range, which I think is enough to punt on Dave.

Regardless of what happens, Chisnall's now up into the top 10 of the FRH rankings (he's ninth, knocking Peter Wright out who's also been overtaken by Ian White) and can go fourth if he wins, and more importantly he's locked up a Grand Slam spot even if he loses. That's dumped out everyone from the European Tour except for White, who's hanging on by a thread.

In other news, Damon Heta did enough to make it to Ally Pally through the DPA rankings, it was going to take something super weird to deny him given the lead he had but he locked it up himself with a final in the first event, and we've got the Tom Kirby final tonight, where we've got Keane Barry against Liam Gallagher (no, not that one, although if he walks out to anything other than Oasis he's making a terrible terrible mistake), which should be a good one. I kind of want Keane to win given the hype there is around him, but whoever gets through should put on a good showing in the worlds. There's also been the WDF event where we've got a final of Peter Machin against Darren Herewini, Machin we know from the World Trophy a couple of years bach, while Herewini's a Kiwi who had a go at Q-School and the first Challenge Tour weekend, in the latter he made the last 128 or better every day but could never really get a good enough run going, while on the Challenge Tour he made a quarter final and last sixteen, so he can't be bad - he did take four legs off Phil the last time he played the Auckland World Series event after all. Who's to say he won't win the New Zealand qualifier for Ally Pally? That said, he is in the BDO event already. He'd certainly be live against Harris if he gives it a go. Nick Kenny and Martijn Kleermaker made the semis, was kind of hoping that Kleermaker would still be a bit under the radar and that, in a wide open Lakeside O2, he'd be a decent each way price, but 20's isn't appealing. The ladies event sees Hedman against Suzuki, in a weird event where there's not many of the top 16 I recognise - Pruim played Winstanley, I know those two, but Maria O'Brien's the only other name I know.

While I mention the BDO side, they've finalised their order, I'll go over it in another post, maybe later today, but the interesting thing is that Bennett is in (although not seeded), as is Greaves on the ladies side (being the 6 seed). Harms is the top seed, but I think I'd much prefer Williams from the 2 seed given how it looks, but as I say, that's for another post.