Kevin Doets (#48 FRH, 88.20 (#67), 408-396 (50.75%, #59))
Noa-Lynn van Leuven (#128 FRH, 84.58 (#86), 34-52 (39.53%, #91))
Michael's now had basically two full years where he hasn't really pushed on from his world championship victory, and a big slide down the rankings as that prize money falls off this time next month is incoming, but where is his game actually at? It's kind of hard to say looking at numbers, his scoring is just outside the top sixteen, but it doesn't feel like there's sixteen better players in the world right now by any stretch of the imagination. Results have been mixed, the highlight being a run to the Matchplay semi final, coming through a strong set of opponents who I was backing all the way before dropping out to Michael van Gerwen, but outside of that there's not been much of anything, at least in the ranked arena (he did of course win the World Cup). The sole wins in knockout stages were against Joe Cullen in the UK Open, Dave Chisnall at the European Championship and Nick Kenny at the PC Finals. He didn't get out of the group at the Slam, and losses to Luke Woodhouse, Gary Anderson, Ritchie Edhouse and Daryl Gurney are, Ando aside, matches he'd expect to win (heck, after the Matchplay, even Ando maybe). The European Tour had just a solitary semi final, and while he did bink one Pro Tour, he only made a further two quarter finals, and that wasn't through playing a reduced schedule or anything. He probably is still better than his FRH and scoring rankings suggest, but he needs to start showing it. Quickly.
One possible second round opponent would be Kevin Doets in a replay of their cracking game at the same stage last season, where Doets averaged 99 and took the game to a deciding set. Kevin's probably not had as good a season this time around as he had then, recall he was very close to making the Matchplay and Grand Prix, but there's still been some highlights, although they're somewhat sporadic On TV he got a little bit of a UK Open run going with wins over Robert Owen and Daniel Klose before losing out to Stephen Bunting in the last 32, but couldn't really do anything against Gilding on the return to Minehead last month. He wasn't close to anything else, but did have a very nice cameo at the World Series finals, putting together a near 110 average in a demolition of Keane Barry and pushing Rob Cross very close in the last sixteen (which would have brought forward a rematch with Smith). Doets played five Euro Tour events, not doing a great deal but getting a win over Mike de Decker (although this was in May before Mike went mental), while on the Pro Tour it's been steady accumulation, picking up four boards wins, two of which he converted into quarter finals, so while his scoring at times has been pretty mediocre, and he's not looked likely to repeat the floor final he made in 2023, there have been some highlights and there's plenty of time on his side, still being very young at least in darts terms.
Noa-Lynn van Leuven will be Kevin's first round opponent, making a debut here after a second placed finish behind Beau Greaves in the Women's Series table. There, Noa won four events to finish comfortably high enough to qualify for here, as well as make the Grand Slam (on account of Beau having won the Matchplay, where Noa lost in the first round to Mikuru Suzuki). There Noa ended up in a group with Anderson, van Gerwen and Joyce which went about as well as can be expected given the toughness of the draw. Outside of that, Noa's played some WDF events and would have been at Lakeside were it not for opting to play here, but seemigly only got the one win, but more notably was able to pick up a Challenge Tour win, and you don't win those by being a bad player. It was one of the ones in Germany, so maybe not quite so strong a field, but the quality of the opponents van Leuven faced from the last 64 onwards was still extremely strong, arguably the weakest being final opponent Tytus Kanik. That was early enough to get Noa into a handful of Pro Tours, but without any success against, Gary Anderson excepted, relatively weak opponents for the level of play, drawing two other non card holders.
This one seems simple enough to call. I don't have enough reliable data to accurately assess van Leuven, and I don't think that Kevin's stats in the database are particularly reflective of how well he can play either, but I'd guess that Doets advances maybe around 70% of the time, perhaps a little bit more. In round two, it's probably about the same sort of thing, if not a bit more one sided. Smith's a quality operator and while he's dropped off from his best, it doesn't seem like as much as Kevin has, and it seems more likely that Smith would be able to up his game than Doets would be able to.
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