Willie O'Connor (#52 FRH, 91.63 (#30), 379-340 (52.71%, #37))
Dylan Slevin (#71 FRH, 87.34 (#73), 234-282 (45.35%, #87))
Looking at those three stats, we may be forgiven for thinking that this has been a bad year for Dimitri, outside of the top 32 in scoring for those in the tournament, losing more legs than he's won in the database. It's just come in a year where he's won a major title, such is the silliness that darts can throw up at times. We'll come to that last - on the floor, Dimitri's been kind of ordinary - his Pro Tour ranking is barely top 50, on the floor his averages aren't even that high, and he had a streak of six straight first round exits in the first half of the season, including to some pretty average players who he should be beating. Of course, he ended that streak with one of his two board wins of the season - naturally given a bit of a feast or famine season, that one was turned into a bink, although a fortunate one given the toughest opponents he faced in that one were a pre-going nuts Mike de Decker and Martin Schindler. His European Tour results were equally unimpressive, getting into all of them through the new system (albeit with one withdrawal), but only getting past a seed once (and then immediately losing in the third round) with a current streak of five first round losses. So it's just been TV, where outside of the obvious, van den Bergh has been getting results that match his ranking - a quarter run at the Matchplay (where he hit a nine) was bettered by a semi final run at the Grand Prix, but in both of these I think it's fair to say he dodged the truly elite talent with maybe his most impressive win in those events being over Dave Chisnall. He missed the Euros, did get out of his Grand Slam group, which again wasn't the hardest and he immediately lost to Wattimena in the knockout stages, and Ross Smith annihilated him in the opening round of the Players Championship Finals. But hey. Brendan Dolan. Vincent van der Voort. Jonny Clayton. Martin Lukeman. Damon Heta. Luke Humphries. Win. Win. Win. Win. Win. Win and that will be a second major title thank you very much. Argue what you like about that path to the semis, you've still got to have some level of play to handle the world number one in a final, and Dimitri did. Just about.
Willie is here for an eighth straight appearance, always floating between pushing towards the top 32 but never quite getting there, and falling down towards the top 64 but never doing so badly that his tour card is in danger. This year, he was the 17th of 32 Pro Tour qualifiers, so slap bang in the middle. Doesn't feel like we've talked about him much at all, so let's see. TV was limited to very short appearances at Minehead twice, not winning a leg against Suljovic in March and only managing the three legs against Zonneveld last month, so not much to go on there. He had just a couple of Euro Tour appearances - first in Riesa he beat Mervyn King and was perhaps a bit unfortunate to not beat Ross Smith, then in the Netherlands he was heavily beaten by Mickey Mansell, while in the only other televised appearance of the World Cup, he'd go out at the group stages for a second straight year as he and Keane Barry couldn't handle the unlikely Chinese Taipei duo. So it's all about the floor, here Willie's stats are solid - just outside the top 32 in averages, only eight first round defeats, four board wins and eight further board finals, peaking at the right time with a semi final in the last event of the season (ironically losing to Rock, who he beat to win his board the day before), and just scanning through the match list he has quite a good array of people he's managed to beat, there's a lot of notable names there and I'm not going to try to name them all, just to say he didn't finish in the top 32 in the floor prize money table for no reason, he's been playing good stuff. Just have to hope it converts to the stage really.
Dylan's had another season where he's kind of been hanging around and not really progressing after garnering a lot of expectations immediately prior to, and immediately after winning. his tour card nearly two years ago. It looks like he should just hold it, but if he wants to keep it after 2025 he's going to need to up his game after a mediocre season which needed a PDPA qualifier bail out, something he managed to do with wins over Jitse van der Wal, Berry van Peer and then Martijn Dragt to book a second appearance here, twelve months after losing to Florian Hempel in the opening round. The floor has been a massive struggle for Slevin - he got his solitary board win in event six, with a fairly fortunate draw, not playing anyone who has qualified for the worlds until he lost to Karel Sedlacek in the last sixteen, but that would be his only board win all season - heck, it'd be one of only two board finals full stop. He has just sixteen wins on the floor all season, only five of which have been against players who qualified for the world championship. The Euro Tour was a little better - qualifying for three isn't too bad given the new qualifying system, and he did pick up a couple of wins over Jamie Hughes and Steve Beaton, although it should be noted that if everyone who originally qualified for the events turned up, Dylan wouldn't have been at any of them. He did just about beat Arron Monk at the UK Open, prior to a loss to Luke Woodhouse, and has shown that he's still decent for his age - easy to forget he's only just turned 22, he was in the top ten in averages on the Development Tour, but found it a bit hard to convert that into wins, with one quarter final, one semi final and then one final where he lost to van Veen, with too many tournaments stalling within the prize money but the early stages thereof. Perhaps his best showing of the season was in the world youth, where after getting through his group he beat Dominik Gruellich and then Wessel Nijman in a huge upset, before van Veen was a bit too strong in the semi final.
Dylan's numbers aren't so bad that he's not without a chance, he projects around one in three against O'Connor, but factor in a little bit of an adjustment for consistency, and then maybe a bit more for pure confidence, and it might drift down closer to one in four, either way it's going to be a hard task for Slevin against someone with the stage experience Willie has. Then in round two, I think it's going to be fairly close - Dimitri's projecting about 60/40, but there's an equally big consistency issue in this one so it could end up being very tight.
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