Jeffrey de Graaf (#57 FRH, 88.21 (#66), 384-391 (49.55%, #66))
Rashad Sweeting (#170 FRH, no data)
Ando may be well into his fifties now, but he is absolutely still in the world's top elite, and by that, I mean being one of the few players that I would say either of the Luke's are close to even money against. Maybe the only one. This fantastic level of play has been going on all year, and probably for a bit longer than that, and I suppose the only real question is whether Anderson is able to keep that level of play up for the length of match that he would need to do in order to claim a third world title - I think a big chunk of that was addressed at his best TV run of the year, the Grand Slam of Darts, where he went toe to toe with Littler for all 31 legs in the semi final, this after going 30 legs against Gian van Veen and eliminating the ever dangerous Stephen Bunting in the last sixteen following a tricky group stage. Sure, it's not quite as long a a world final is (where you'd need to win 21 legs minimum), but it does allay some fears. Elsewhere on TV, it's been a bit disappointing to be fair - a quarter at the Euros where he beat van Gerwen really comfortably but would surprisingly lose to Ritchie Edhouse, Michael Smith did for him at the Matchplay, and while he would avenge that loss in Leicester he again lost to the eventual winner in Mike de Decker. Losing to Martin Lukeman at the UK Open was a bit of a weird one, as was his loss to Ryan Meikle just this past month. Lower down, he did claim a first European Tour title for many a year, having the intentions to play more but after that win not having the need to, while on the Pro Tour, where he had the highest year long average by a clear two points, Anderson would claim a further two titles. The level of game is there to go all the way in this one, he just needs to not have one of those weird losses that make us all wonder what the fuck happened there.
Jeffrey is making a fourth appearance here, and a second in back to back years, qualifying first through the SDC rankings, and also through the Pro Tour, so it's a weird spot where he uses the SDC quali spot but is treated as a Pro Tour qualifier in the draw. de Graaf, now representing Sweden, won his card on the last day of Q-School and has had a pretty up and down time on the floor - losing in the first round of his first five events (where I note he lost to Anderson), getting going a little bit before a final run from nowhere (the one that Dolan won), doing so-so before a second round loss to Anderson (again) started an eight match losing streak. He snapped that against Luke Humphries (yes, really) and won his board, but outside of those two runs he only made the board final on two further occasions and couldn't win either of them. He augmented those winnings with a couple of Euro Tour qualifications, one where he was able to beat Razma and Bunting before losing to Searle, while in the other he came through Gilding only to lose to Dobey. As stated, de Graaf was able to play the SDC citcuit, on that tour he won three events and made the final of a fourth to finish clear of Darius Labanauskas and be one of the first players to qualify for here. Jeffrey was also one half of the Sweden team that pushed Scotland all the way in the World Cup quarter finals, and while he disappointingly lost to Matt Dennant in the first round of the UK Open, in the return to Minehead he was able to pick up a couple of wins over Ryan Searle and Thibault Tricole, before going out by the odd break to Scott Williams in the last sixteen. He's been about for a while and has a lot of experience in both codes, and while he's not playing bad, I don't know if it's quite at top 64 level, but with what he's done this year he's given himself a very good platform to get there in the rankings, even if the stats may not match up to it.
Rashad Sweeting is one of the real unknowns in this field, and will be the first player from the Bahamas to appear in a world championship after winning the Caribbean and Latam tour. This was a fairly short series of events which ran for just a couple of weekends, and he claimed two of the four titles, the first being over Costa Rican Guillermo Soto, the second over Guyanese World Cup player Sudesh Fitzgerald (who has played here before), and then also made the second final in that weekend as well, losing out to Soto on this occasion. That put him well clear in the points table, it was pretty close for second but Sweeting won't care about that. How good is he? I want to say this might be a massive step up in quality. The events he played in are on Dart Connect, although they're a little hard to find, and his overall tour average was only 75, while a quick look at the games he played in the semi finals onwards saw him win 38 legs, of which only 9 were in fifteen darts or fewer (so less than 25% - by comparison, de Graaf is bang on 50% this year), and more than half were in seven or more visits, a few of them significantly so. Is that average misleading due to the level of play? Maybe. Is he only playing as well as he needs to in order to get the results he needed? Possibly. Is it simply that he is the best of, on the world level, a bad bunch? I fear this might be the case.
I can't look past a trivial win for de Graaf, and then a trivial win for Anderson. Jeffrey isn't bad, but Anderson is so much better that the projection, over what isn't the longest format in the world, is over 90%. Don't need to say much more about this one.
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