Kim Huybrechts (#46 FRH, 89.33 (#52), 309-327 (48.58%, #74))
Keane Barry (#54 FRH, 88.53 (#60), 363-370 (49.52%, #67))
Has it been a good season for Gerwyn? He'd probably think not, given results have been a lot more hit than miss, especially on the ranked circuit (he did pick up a couple of World Series events), but statistically he's still right up there - probably not quite at the Littler and Humphries level, but definitely in that chasing pack that's just behind them. So in terms of results, after that shocking result against Dolan least year, it's been a little bit of bad luck, hitting an in form Schindler first up at the UK Open, a similarly good Ross Smith at Blackpool, the resurgent Wade at the Grand Prix, but things would tail off after that, first round defeats to Gurney and Tricole at the two majors he did play, having not made the Slam at all. Not exactly running into bad players early, but would have liked more late. A six year streak of having won a Euro Tour looked like it would continue with two semis and a final to start the season, but would only make the one final session after that, have a string of second round defeats, and he made just the two semi finals on the floor all year, losing to van Gerwen in his one final. It's hard to say quite what's going on, it's half as if he's not that bothered about the game, but at the same time the numbers don't lie and he still does appear perfectly capable of hanging with anyone in the world and winning major titles. Maybe having less expectations will help him - he's certainly in the easiest quarter, but what will he actually do?
It's been a weird season for Kim as well. In 2023 it was looking like he was turning the corner back towards staying the top 32, but this season has been wildly different, clearly still being good enough to hang around in the top 64, but the higher tier where he'd be seeded here looks further away than ever. Outside of the unranked World Cup (which he won't be at next year thanks to the explosion of Mike de Decker), he's done little, having crept into the seeds for the last worlds he crashed out to Richard Veenstra without winning a leg, in what could be an omen he lost his opening UK Open game to his opponent here in Keane Barry, and only just got into the Minehead field in the last quarter, where he did get an impressive victory over Wessel Nijman before losing in the second round to Scott Williams. That sounds moderately standard, but the European Tour was the weirdest, not qualifying for a single event, but getting a late replacement call up to the final event and making a run to the final, where a win (which he obviously didn't get against Luke Humphries) would have got him into the Euros. That run, while he wasn't playing awful players, didn't see him come up against a single seeded player until the final, as well as getting a first round bye and a match against a domestic qualifier, so while you can only beat who's in front of you, it's not as big an achievement as it seems. Kim didn't get beyond the last sixteen of a single floor event, so it's kind of miraculous that he's even here.
Keane on the other hand has needed to rely on the Development Tour as a backup to qualify here, which to be fair is not exactly his fault. There's a post a bit ago where I looked at who had the toughest floor draws and of those that were playing the majority of events, Keane was having by far the hardest time, so that he was unable to qualify for Minehead was not a surprise in the circumstances. He did get three quarter final runs, which isn't bad at all (and three more than Kim had), and elsewhere he's generally been alright - the UK Open saw him come through a Riley's qualifier, the aforementioned game with Kim and then Ryan Meikle to get to the last sixteen where he fell to Rob Cross, he got through the qualifier for the Slam and got a win over Lourence Ilagan before coming out second best in a winner takes all tie against van den Bergh, and he did the same in the World Series finals but ran into an inspired Kevin Doets. As stated, the Development Tour was his friend, Keane taking two of the first three titles and adding a third later on, finishing third in the rankings which with Nijman qualifying by right was enough to get him here.
First round is a tight one to call - I think Kim is favoured, but it's the correct side of 2-1 from Keane's perspective (but safely over 60% for Huybrechts), he's got an experience advantage but Barry does have the head to head in important games advantage, and additionally has two other lower profile wins in my database, one each in 2022 and 2023, so maybe in context it's a bit closer to 60/40? Price should be comfortable enough with either opponent, he's projecting just shy of 80% in the sample against Huybrechts (and Barry would be a bit further back again), but maybe with Gerwyn not having been getting results, it may be a bit closer in reality, it is after all three years ago since they had their chippy third round match which went to a deciding leg. We shall see.
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