Callan Rydz (#43 FRH, 90.59 (#37), 366-375 (49.39%, #68))
Romeo Grbavac (#139 FRH, 84.11 (#91), 23-44 (34.33%, #94))
Great season for Martin, who finally made the breakthrough to the senior level in some style, with the relatively rare Pro Tour title skip straight to European Tour level, even rarer in that he would be able to bink two of them in one year. Let's talk about those first, the opener was in Riesa, where, unseeded at the time, he beat a domestic qualifier, Cullen, Veenstra, Noppert, Dobey and multiple time winner at this venue Gerwyn Price to claim his first title. But things got better, as in Basel he doubled his tally, taking out Anton Ostlund, Bunting, Barney, Rock and then Ryan Searle in a tight decider that went all the way. Two semi finals and three quarter finals at this level capped a great European Tour year for Martin, ensuring he'd enter the European Championship as the number one seed, but while he'd average safely over 100, he went down to a resurgent Dirk van Duijvenbode in the opening round. This is kind of what's been happening on TV, it's not quite happening yet - at the UK Open he drew Littler in his second game after just beating Gerwyn Price, so wasn't given an easy draw in that one, at Blackpool a draw with Dimitri is one that it feels like should go either way but it didn't fall for Martin, at Leicester he got a kinder draw against Dolan, but Cross in round two would be a bit too good, then at the Slam he'd be one leg short of getting out of the group stages, before going on another little bit of a run at Minehead with wins over Dolan once more then Ryan Meikle before another Ryan, namely Joyce, prevented a best run at this event. On the floor it's been so-so, he did make one semi final and one quarter final, but that was it and he wasn't in the top half of the seeds for that Players Championship Finals, so an obvious area for improvement in 2025. All in all however, the highs more than outweigh the lows and he is truly established in the top 32 at this stage.
Someone looking to get back there is Callan Rydz, a quarter finalist here three years ago who looked to have all the potential in the world, but has seen his career stall somewhat as he has drifted outside the top 32 and not really looking like he's doing enough on a consistent basis to be able to get back there. The floor season started really well, with a quarter final and semi final in the first three events, beating the likes of Clayton, Rock and Littler in those two, with a lot of very good averages (he would finish just outside the top 32 for the year on that metric), but just could not maintain the consistent runs, getting a further two quarter finals in the season mainly through draws rather than great play and not winning a board outside of that. Callan was one of the main beneficiaries of the new Euro Tour system, getting himself into nine of them, but losing in the opening round six times, always losing to a card holder but certainly not one of the bigger names that'd enter at that stage. One run was however to the semi finals, and it would be in the second one Schindler won, beating Dolan, van Veen, Menzies and Wade, but would only win the single leg in a semi final against Searle. Callan's not really done anything on TV of note, dropping from being in the Grand Prix spots last year to just being in more or less the bare minimum of the two Minehead events, where he'd go 0-2, playing fairly well in the UK Open but losing a winnable tie 6-5 against Benjamin Drue Reus, and while he didn't play too badly later in the year either, he would only get the one leg against van Duijvenbode. If he can get things going, his game's great, it just happens much less often than we'd like these days.
If you ask the average fan who's not seen the draw who's in the field from Croatia, you'd probably see almost everyone say Boris Krcmar. But no, he's not there, but Romeo Grbavac is, making his debut in a season where he's kind of come from obscurity to being a moderately well known name. Grbavac won through one of the last qualifiers, the Eastern Europe qualifier, and had to beat some tough names to get there, including Alex Masek and the Polish pair of Kciuk and Bialecki, winning an all-Croat final relatively comfortably with a high 80's average. We have seen more than that from him though, he's not a complete random by any stretch. Romeo tried his hand at Q-School and got through stage one on the second day, but stage 2 was a bit too much of a step as he couldn't get beyond the last 32 at that level. It did however allow Grbavac to play the Challenge Tour, and here he started well - a quarter final and two last sixteen runs in the first weekend, it got him high enough to sneak into a couple of Pro Tours, losing to Hendo in one, but beating Rock before losing to Leighton Bennett in the other. Grbavac did get another last sixteen on the second CT weekend, but didn't add much more and he took the last couple of weekends off. Stage experience has been gained through the Euro Tour - he came through regional qualifiers three times, in Belgium in the first weekend he lost to Chris Dobey, then in back to back weekends in April he lost to Stephen Bunting and Wessel Nijman (6-5 in the latter case in fairness), so not exactly the kindest draws he could have got, while on a bigger stage he'd partner Krcmar in the World Cup, coming out of a group with Canada and Malaysia, then in the knockouts scoring a huge upset by eliminating Wales, nearly reaching a semi final as they then lost a deciding leg to eventual finalists Austria. Still relatively young at the age of 30, 2024's been an excellent learning experience.
The data I have on Romeo isn't non-existent but isn't really enough to trust projections, so I'll just say that I expect Callan to be relatively comfortable. Grbavac's numbers in the Pro Tour as a whole shouldn't be able to prevent Rydz from getting plenty of chances to claim legs, and the Croatian may be reliant on mistakes from the Riot, rather than being able to generate too much of his own. A Schindler/Rydz match in round two could be relatively interesting, I've got a projection for Callan as closer to 40% than to a one in three outsider, so while Martin's correctly the favourite, Rydz certainly has enough about him to not let the German have things all his own way.
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