Love fifteen

Another two misses, as long as we don't end up giving three break points...

Down to the quarters and it's down to Price/Bunting, Barney/Dobey, MvG/King and White/O'Connor. Few surprising names there, Bunting being one but he's playing the best he has in years, Barney being another but he's not looked too shabby either, O'Connor's hit a bit of form, otherwise you can kind of expect most of these names to be in the equation at this end of an event. One fun stat about Bunting - he's only lost seven legs, and he's averaging 108 in them!

Any bets we like? I actually don't like the near 3/1 we're getting on Bunting - Price is just that good. Sure, if Bunting can sustain the level of play he's shown in the previous three rounds it's worth the shot, but this sort of really short term form bet is rarely a good idea, particularly against someone quite as solid as Price is. Barney/Dobey's lined up as a flip (Barney's actually the tiny favourite), this seems fine if you ask me. MvG/King I think we can avoid betting on lightning striking twice and Mervyn getting another upset following the UK Open, Michael's performance in seeing off James Wade is, in my eyes, the performance of the tournament so far, it was that good. That just leaves White/O'Connor - Ian's 1/2, that looks about right season long, once we get past that stage when Willie won his event then maybe it ought to be around 1/3, but I think we can consider that O'Connor's playing a little bit better than that this weekend and assume the season long stats are correct.

So, that's going to be it for the year - I'm at Bramall Lane later so won't be able to post anything before the semis and finals, I really hope we either see a Price/MvG final, or we get two complete different players against each other. Either we see probably the two best players in the world today face off for all the cash, or we get two players whose final run would be a great story. Can Bunting roll back the years to his world champion days? Can Barney go out with one last major title? Can Dobey claim his first title and announce himself on the world stage? Can King finally claim the major PDC (World Masters is a major imo) title that's eluded him for so long? Can White finally break that TV quarter final hoodoo and push through to get the major that his level of play indicates he should be contending for? Or can O'Connor allow Ireland to retain the title, even if Gurney couldn't?

Who knows. Frankly the Humphries/Gawlas match might be more important :)