Sunday 18 December 2022

First three and a bit day's thoughts

Rapid thoughts of what's gone down so far, but I will first throw a bet this evening of 0.1u Krcmar 16/5, as mentioned in the previous post, we'd probably start looking seriously at taking the underdog at around 2/1, maybe 9/4 or 5/2 we'd get stronger. Better than 3/1 on Hills seems seriously worth a shot. But thoughts:

Mansell/Robb wasn't a great watch, neither was Mansell's second round game.

What on earth was Barry doing. Sampson was what we thought he was, and that showed in his second round matchup, but Keane losing that was unbelievable. Fair play to Grant, he took his chances.

Rafferty handled his game well, but was clearly out of his depth against Smith, as you might have expected. Thought he'd at least win a leg though.

Cuming and Suzuki were not good. We didn't think they would be, and it's kind of a bad look for so many of the international qualifiers to be so bad. Hopefully with the Asian Tour back in 2023 and the DPA circuit going nationwide as well, everyone playing a higher standard of opponent throughout will see things get back towards normal.

Larsson wasn't bad, but Adie was better as we thought, this should be a great match incoming.

Ilagan holding out to win against Rowby was a big surprise. We all thought (at the match, this being the session I was at) the momentum was all with Rodriguez at this stage, but it wasn't to be.

Pity for Greaves. I had a decent chance at a combination bet which would have needed her to win a set, and I think she was value for it, but at the same time I don't think Willie can look at the scoreline and think it will be unfair. Hopefully Beau can now see the level she'll need to improve to, and will get into the Development Tour next year and really start to play against higher level opponents.

Brown/Hempel game was a really fun back and forth matchup. Would watch that one again, that had five sets written all over it, and we got all but one possible leg.

Yamamoto was like Suzuki in that we expected him to be poor, and outside of a brief cameo, he was, Perez on the other hand was performing a fair bit better than anticipated and will be wondering how he didn't win that game. Whitlock was very, very lucky.

Pity for Burnett there, really thought that he would have taken that one from two sets to one up, but fair play to Adam, he stuck around and the card looks safe as a result.

I took a non-recommended play on Gurney after seeing that he was 4/5. Whoops.

Meikle held his nerve well there. To go from cruising at 2-0, then be pegged back to 2-2 with the crowd backing your opponent, then sweep the final set, that takes some doing.

Menzies didn't make it easy against Portela, Diogo does seem to be getting better but still a bit away from the sort of level where you'd think he belong on the tour.

Rock will be better for having come through a grind of a first two sets which were shared. Gets the first round jitters out of the way, had a bit of a test, then looked really strong in the last two sets.

I thought Ilagan played that last match closer than it seems he did, although I was quite drunk at the time so easy not to remember it correctly.

Today, Jiwa will be kicking himself for missing set darts in both sets one and three, that'd have been a sweep, as we thought might have been the case, Madars isn't really that much better and he left the door open - Prakash just couldn't walk through it. Doesn't look like Raymond Smith did much wrong, Sedlacek was just great and probably the player of the round to date. Omelchenko wasn't as bad as advertised but still not in Woodhouse's league, and right now, Heta's safely got a set on the board which should be a good settler.

Will trip report later, as well as look at Monday/Tuesday plays.

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