Mensur Suljovic (#59 FRH, 88.27 (#65), 329-338 (49.33%, #70))
Matt Campbell (#61 FRH, 88.20 (#68), 222-256 (46.44%, #83))
Ryan's pretty much had a season of standing still, not really making the breakthroughs and progress that plenty of us know he's capable of, but certainly not having a bad season by any stretch of the imagination. The floor results have been very good - starting with back to back finals where he would only lose to Luke Littler and Gary Anderson, before reversing that Anderson in event 3 to make it five years on the bounce where he's won a floor title. Searle would continue with steady play, reaching one further final in mid season where Damon Heta was pretty much unplayable, and finish strong with two semi finals in the last three events, seeing him accumulate the fourth most money on the Pro Tour in 2024. His European Tour form was also extremely solid - he is still yet to make the breakthrough at this level, but had by far his best season to date, with six quarter finals, a semi final and then a first final in Switzerland, although that is one he will definitely want back given he was 7-4 up against Schindler only to lose the last four legs of that final. This gave Ryan good seedings for the relevant tournaments - #4 at Minehead only to lose in the first round to Jeffrey de Graaf, and #8 in Dortmund, where he would comfortably defeat Barney but then go out to Luke Woodhouse in round two. His other TV performances were somewhat underwhelming, losing a deciding leg to Graham Usher in the UK Open, getting a good win over Damon Heta in Blackpool only to run into an inspired Rob Cross, then he would take Aspinall all the way to a deciding leg at the Grand Prix but not get over the line. The scoring is at a top sixteen level, and the amount of legs he's won is better still, there's just not been the key win that he's been looking for in 2024. Maybe it comes here?
Mensur is making a sixteenth appearance, back here after being one of the highest profile names to miss out last year, which put him in that pot of players who are on a one year tour card but missed the worlds who would be logically in danger of losing their card. Those fears have been dismissed with a solid enough season, while I don't think he's mathematically safe, it'd take a strange set of results for him not to remain on the tour for 2025. This has pretty much entirely come down to getting better results on the floor than his averages might suggest - only being in the top 100 of raw averages by less than half a point, but ending up in the third quarter of Players Championship Finals qualifiers. Suljovic was able to accumulate five lost board finals before a quarter final run in August, and was able to finish strong with just the two first round defeats in the last ten events, taking two of the last three events to a last sixteen and a second quarter final of the season. This'd be enough to get him to Minehead as mentioned, but he would go down in the opening game to Wesley Plaisier. The European Tour was almost a total loss, only qualifying for Hildesheim (as an alternate) where he did knock out Dimitri prior to a 6-4 loss to Martin Schindler. Mensur threatened to get a bit of a run going at the UK Open with a big win over Willie O'Connor before a huge upset over Michael van Gerwen, but Dave Chisnall was a bit too strong in the last 32. It would be the World Cup where Suljovic had his best run of the year, reaching a second final with Rowby, coming through an admittedly easy group then eliminating Taipei, Croatia and Belgium before losing to England in the final. While that's not ranked, it did give him a spot in the Grand Slam - he didn't win a game in what was a tough group, but the money earned may end up being absolutely critical.
Matt is making a sixth straight appearance, not having the greatest set of results prior to last year where he fnially got a bit of a run going, eliminating Lourence Ilagan and James Wade in deciding sets before running into the freight train that was Luke Littler. 2024 has been a fair disappointment though, as he didn't make a single European Tour event, and narrowly missed the Players Championship Finals - this despite a run to a final. In that floor event, he defeated Pilgrim and Ross Smith, then the Dutch line up of Plaisier, van Veen, Veenstra and Noppert, with several of those wins coming in deciding legs, but would come up short against Dimitri in a forgettable final. The problem came in the rest of the season - while that result gave him ten grand of ranking money, the remainder of the season saw him win only eleven grand, with fifteen first round exits, which you can call twenty if you include the events he missed, and he couldn't progress beyond a board final all year apart from that one off. Matt would lose to Nick Kenny in his only singles TV event all year, while in the World Cup with Dave Cameron, Canada would finish second in the group stages behind Croatia. All this left Matt outside of all Ally Pally qualification methods - while he did win the North American championship, PDC rules meant he couldn't use the qualification spot that comes with it due to his tour card status, so he needed the PDPA qualifier, where he beat Mario Vandenbogaerde, Andy Baetens and then Mervyn King to qualify, coming from 5-2 down to win 7-6 in that final match up. He's always seemed to play better on stage compared to the floor, and with his floor form this season, you can see this continuing into the worlds, if only by default as opposed to for the right reasons.
This first round game is relatively tight. Suljovic has been playing the better stuff, but the numbers look relatively similar. Mensur projects in the 60% to 65% range, which I guess is more down to Matt being inconsistent rather than Suljovic being a substantially better player. Ryan should be relatively comfortable whoever he plays, it is not the best draw he could have got, but it's certainly not the worst, and he projects around the 70/30 mark if he was to face Suljovic.
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