Dolan/Dudeney - Let's give credit to Tavis here. He has had a really hard year, but got here, and did not play that badly at all. Dolan did enough, but against a lot of other qualifiers might have been in some bother here, but this seems like more for something that Dudeney can build on in year two of the card rather than a big confidence builder for Brendan.
Menzies/Manby - Well that was a thing. I think most things that have been said about this game have already been said, I don't want to add anything to it beyond that I think Cammy needs some help, and he should get the help he needs, which I think he will. In terms of Charlie, which has clearly been hugely overlooked here, I don't think that's his best game by some stretch, it was alright, but I'll put that down to first game things.
Suljovic/Cameron - Not really sure why the averages were so high in this one. Seems to be the other player keeping things in good order and not too many missed doubles, rather than really good power scoring. We thought Mensur would move on, and he did.
Wright/van Leuven - Meh. Poor game between poor players. Peter needed to do basically nothing, but we thought doing that would be enough for the win, and it was. Probably won't get away with that against Merk.
Lukeman/Hopp - Another not particularly good game, but it went with form. Martin's not in it, I'm not sure if Max is in it, but he's closer to being in it than Lukeman is, and that was enough.
van Duijvenbode/Baetens - This seemed like a fun one. Andy finally bringing the game that we know he has, and Dirk doing just enough to respond to it. Nice match gents.
Clayton/Lipscombe - Feels like one where the seed did just enough to get through and not expend more on the game than they needed to do. Adam's performance looks fine on paper, just an awkward draw.
Scutt/Whitlock - Got to give some credit to Whitlock for battling back into this one, at two sets down this could easily have been a case of ok nice to be back but done now, but two last leg wins, he kept going. I suppose if you've been on the other end of one of the sport's big comebacks you'll have the intent to keep going.
Soutar/Harju - Wowza. Did not see this coming as it did, particularly after Alan started like a train winning the first six legs. Unfortunately, he continued like a train, not being able to go more than fifteen minutes without breaking down or otherwise being cancelled, letting Teemu right back into it to the point where he was getting match darts, for full disclosure I was on Harju, but I have no complaints. No business getting darts to win in the first place, can say I was on the right side of the line, we move on.
Kenny/Hood - Really good debut for Justin. Nick wasn't playing badly, was merely Hood just playing lights out and bringing it when it would have been really easy for him to take a set or so to get used to the stage. We'll come on to Noppert in a bit but that's the sort of showing that'll ask some questions.
Williams/Nebrida - Kind of the same really. Paolo was perfectly fine, didn't do much of anything wrong, was merely a case of Williams putting in towards the top end of the performances we've seen of him, and getting the results which we might not have done so quite so often.
Dobey/Zong - I mean realistically Chris was never in any sort of massive trouble, but Zong did look to miss quite a few doubles, it's good signs of progress so maybe next year we see a Kumar sort of thing where he's developed for another year, gets a more favourable draw and then moves on.
Pietreczko/de Sousa - Weird one. Ricardo looked to be doing just enough, but all three of the first three sets went to deciders. Not overly convincing from Pikachu, maybe on another day things fall a bit differently and we're still talking about Jose maybe being able to retain his card. But we won't.
Noppert/van der Velde - Thumbs up to both players here. Jurjen was bringing things in all aspects, but in one of the few matches I've actually watched this year, Danny, when under what was probably a bit of unexpected pressure, brought the big key visits when it needed. Very good signs for both.
Price/Gawlas - Huge disparity between the players. Adam only got a couple of legs because, in all honesty, Gerwyn let him. Solid enough showing from Gezzy, Gawlas still looks as inconsistent as ever. Back to back visits of 180 and then 3 demonstrate that perfectly.
Springer/Comito - Now this was the real big shocker. Joe looked a bit better than we expected, probably quite a lot better, but I have no idea what that was from Niko. He was not good. I mean if he was still suffering from whatever he pulled out of Minehead for then maybe, but I don't think that was the case. It just seems like a really off day coupled with Joe being very opportunistic when needed, so fair play to him for that.
Gambling continues to go well. Monday was excellent. Today (yesterday by the time this post goes live) was break even, if Harju had have nicked it we would have been in fantastic shape for the tournament, but we won't be greedy. We're getting close to a round two projections post so keep checking in for that one.
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