Scott Williams (#39 FRH, 89.61 (#47), 451-431 (51.13%, #54))
Niko Springer (#141 FRH, 88.91 (#56), 115-92 (55.56%, #20))
It'll always surprise me just how little respect Rob has given the level of play he's been able to put up on a consistent basis, pretty much since before he became a world champion. But that is what it is, and this year has been OK, all things considered. Rob managed four televised quarter finals this season, which seems alright given I don't think he's a top four player right now - maybe the UK Open could have gone better, he beat who he should have done to reach the quarter there with only Josh Rock being a real challenger, but would lose to Ricky Evans at that point, the Matchplay saw a couple of solid wins over van Veen and Searle before losing to Michael Smith, he was able to break a personal duck at the Grand Prix with wins over Luke Littler and Martin Schindler prior to a narrow loss to Ryan Joyce, then at the Grand Slam, he came second in his group, got past Ritchie Edhouse but then lost to Martin Lukeman - so maybe there could have been a bit more, particularly if we consider first round losses in the other TV events (although one of those was to Littler, so fair enough). Rob was able to have a solid European Tour season, winning his second event in his career notably beating Stephen Bunting as well as Luke Humphries in the final, picking up a final and semi final on the tour as well, but the Pro Tour was not great. Cross did miss several events, but would fail to make a quarter final all season - winning his board on six occasions, but not getting past that point, which explains why he barely made the Players Championship Finals, where he ran into Luke Littler. The numbers and performances are in that kind of bracket where it's not amongst the world's best, but just behind that where he can beat whoever if he's on his game.
Scott had a magnificent tournament this time last year, but I think it's fair to say he's not really kicked on from that semi final out of nowhere, not being able to secure a top 32 position but still making it here fairly comfortably. His floor record has been more or less par for the course - doing his best work in the early part of the season, getting his two quarter finals in the first ten events, along with one of his other board wins, which he was able to do three times - one straight after in event 11, but the other was on a fairly dry spell later in the season where he wasn't having a huge amount of big failures, but wasn't able to get a great deal started either. On the Euro Tour, he wasn't in that group of players that were getting invites so needed to go through the now much harder qualifiers, and only got there three times. That said, he did do some good work in those, getting through the first round every time and pushing through to round three twice, with a win over Ratajski in Sindelfingen and Dobey in Hungary. That wasn't enough to get him into the Euros, and he didn't get into the Slam either, and his UK Open run ended after one game with a loss to Ricky Evans, but the probable highlight of the year was in the Players Championship Finals, where he had a surprise quarter final run - getting narrow wins over Gian van Veen, Kim Huybrechts and Jeffrey de Graaf, but Ross Smith would be way too good at the last eight. Maybe not the best season, but certainly not the worst.
Niko will make his debut as the latest off the German production line, and he will make the step up to the main tour having finished second on the Challenge Tour, well behind Wessel Nijman but doing more than everyone else to book his tour card and his Ally Pally spot. Springer's been a name we've known for a while with occasional flashes on the European Tour, but this year has been a big step up, at least on the Dev Tour where he made five finals, converting three into wins, beating Gian van Veen and Wessel Nijman in two of the finals, and only being stopped by eventual overall tour winner Nijman in the two he lost. Niko had the third highest average on the whole tour (again, behind Nijman and van Veen), indicating his relative level of play against his peers, so it's going to be interesting to see what he will be able to do at the next level. He also played a fair chunk of the Challenge Tour - not doing an enormous amount, failing to get past the last 32 at any stage, but it was generally needing a solid player to stop him - David Evans, Scutt, Spellman, Unterbuchner, van Schie, Harrysson, Hopp - not exactly a bad list of names. Springer's fortunate in that he has way more chances than most as an affiliate to get on the European Tour, and he was able to do so twice - in Sindelfingen, ironically he drew Scott Williams and lost 6-1, while in Hildesheim he gave Peter Wright a decent game but ended up going down 6-4, while Keane Barry would stop his world youth aspirations at the last sixteen stage.
I think Niko's going to be a very strong player in the future, but this may be a tad early for him. That said, the numbers are close enough year long that Scott is projecting the wrong side of 60/40 from the Williams standpoint, so the young German ace is more than capable of pulling of the upset in this one. Neither player seems particularly close to Rob in terms of talent, but Scott has enough game in him to maybe nick the game a bit more than one time in four, and we've seen that he has course and distance here, so it's not one that Cross is going to take lightly, whoever he ends up drawing.
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