Alan Soutar (#56 FRH, 89.01 (#53), 343-332 (50.81%, #58))
Kai Gotthardt (#120 FRH, 89.59 (#48), 119-141 (45.77%, #85))
It's been a fantastic season for the Bullet, where he's been able to push back up into the world's top ten, looks like a clear top 10 level player, and he's also picked up a first televised title, becoming the last Masters winner under its old format. That title, with wins over Ross Smith, Luke Humphries, Peter Wright, Nathan Aspinall and Michael van Gerwen, is representative of how well he has been playing throughout 2024, being at a level where he has to be in serious contention for the Premier League, especially with a good run here. The one thing that might hold that back is a relative lack of TV form - he did get a good run to the UK Open quarters, only being stopped by Humphries but certainly not having the hardest path to that stage, but besides that it's been fairly ordinary - losing to Humphries again at Blackpool after beating Ryan Joyce, Humphries again at the Grand Prix from a near unassailable position, Anderson in the Euros and also in the first knockout round of the Slam, and then Mario Vandenbogaerde at the return to Minehead being the only one he might want back. It's ordinary finishes, but generally speaking it's needing a truly elite player to knock him out. It's perhaps surprising that he's yet to win a Euro Tour, he was moderately close this year with five final session appearances, but couldn't turn any of them into a final, which given his floor record in finals at Pro Tour level might not have been a pretty sight if he did. At Pro Tour level he went a crazy 0-6 in finals, including losing three back to back, the closest he got in any of those was losing in deciding legs to Littler and Humphries. This might be the best he's ever been playing, the time when he moved over straight after winning Lakeside was a while ago now, but I don't recall him being quite this strong at the time.
Soutar had a pretty darned good 2022, but a fairly awful 2023, which was bad enough that he missed the worlds and could have been in trouble for retaining his card. That didn't turn out to be a problem however, as Alan was one of the more unlikely winners of a Pro Tour title this season, picking up his maiden victory in June to make him safe for this, although it wasn't realistically enough to make a run at either of the Matchplay or Grand Prix. That win of Alan's was a weird one - I don't think he played any bad players at all, the only player who isn't here that he faced was Steve Beaton and five of the other six players have all reached or won major finals, but probably the hardest opponent he faced was Danny Noppert in the board final, so there was some element of fortune in that he managed to avoid the truly tough tests for the most part. Still, you can only beat who was in front of you and it was a great result. Other than that on the floor, it was mostly misses - he did get to a semi final in the opening event of the season, but would only win his board on a further two occasions, and barely has a winning record in the first round after a horror ending to the season, being on a run of seven straight defeats, six of his opponents not qualifying for the worlds this year with the only exception being Andrew Gilding. Soutar made four Euro Tours, but only in Prague did he really do anything by beating Florian Hempel and Ross Smith to make the last sixteen, his only other win being over a domestic qualifier, and his only TV appearances were both at Minehead where he lost to Brett Claydon and Jermaine Wattimena.
Kai has got to be one of the most improved players of the season, going from effectively being just a guy who we've seen in the European Tour on several occasions, to making his debut here after winning through what has been dubbed the Europe Super League, which appeared to consist of all Germans and one Austrian. Still, he won through his group and then showed enormous cojones to win four straight last leg deciders against former European Tour winner Max Hopp, solid talent Franz Roetzsch, upcoming youngster Dominik Gruellich and then card holder Paul Krohne in the final, What else has he done this year? Well, Gotthardt did make it to one European Tour event, where he averaged over a ton but lost 6-2 to Brendan Dolan, and also made decent inroads on the Challenge Tour, just ending up in the top 25 of the rankings as well as 25th in the averages, not making a final but having six runs to the last sixteen or better, peaking at a couple of semi finals, and the defeats he's had have generally been to known players as opposed to complete randoms, indicating that it often takes someone decent to stop him these days. A lot of those good runs were early in the season, which has allowed Kai to get very useful Pro Tour experience, appearing in ten events and actually winning his board on a couple of occasions, getting a best win against Damon Heta, and again, generally requiring an above average player to stop him, the only ones he might want back being losses to Perez and Crabtree.
This first round game is going to be tight, tight, tight - Alan actually projects slightly lower than Kai does, with Gotthardt showing up as a marginal 55/45 type of favourite in the projections. Maybe it's closer based on experience, but I also half wonder given Alan's run to end the season if something isn't quite right, but he wasn't terrible at Minehead so maybe it's just a bad run. The second round game should be extremely comfortable for Bunting though, the projection's only showing 75/25 but I can't help but think that in reality it'll be a bit more one sided than that suggests.
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