World Matchplay Preview: Will Lewis and Durrant make this weekend’s semi-finals?
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We look ahead to tonight’s quarter-finals in Milton Keynes
Only five matches remain of this year’s World Matchplay tournament, with two more quarter-final match-ups to determine who makes semi-final number two.
Tonight’s action sees Glen Durrant take on Vincent van der Voort with Adrian Lewis up against Dimitri Van den Bergh to see who joins Gary Anderson and Michael Smith in the semi-finals.
There’s all to play for after pre-tournament favourite Michael van Gerwen’s exit in the second round, with the action at the oche scheduled to get underway from 19:15.
There couldn’t be a much wider gap in terms of experience at this stage of a competition between the two.
Adrian Lewis may not have won the World Matchplay before, coming closest in 2013 where Phil Taylor downed him in the final, but his wealth of experience in the latter stages of knockout tournaments could give him the edge over his Belgian counterpart.
Van den Bergh’s darts career is still relatively young, but he’s lost all four of the previous quarter-finals he’s competed in, most recently in the UK Open where he missed out 5-10 to Gerwyn Price.
Jackpot Lewis is a four-time PDC premier event winner in contrast but he’s let himself down with his averages in previous tournaments. He’s found his rhythm in Milton Keynes and is averaging a far more consistent 98, while he’s also got the edge with checkout percentage between the two as well.
We make the Englishman the narrow odds-on 4/5 favourite, with Dancing Dimitri a touch further out at evens to reach his first semi-final.
If experience does shine through, Lewis could put in a complete performance. We’ve got him down as 4/1 for King of the Oche.
Van den Bergh’s been putting in some impressive checkouts, including a 156 against Nathan Aspinall. He could go one better here, with a Van den Bergh 170 checkout priced at 12/1.
Could this be Glen Durrant’s year? With most of the pre-tournament favourites out of the running, he may never get a better chance to win a major PDC tournament.
He’s 11/4 third-favourite to win the tournament heading in to his quarter-final, and has prior tournament winning experience, albeit in the BDO World Championship.
He won’t have it all his own way though, as Vincent van der Voort will provide a tricky test through the early stages of the tie.
What remains to be seen is whether he can maintain his impressive performances over the longer format, so we could see his game fade away and allow Durrant to capitalise.
Durrant has knocked out world champion Peter Wright this week, and has an impressive average of over 100 too, plus a checkout conversion rate of just over 40%. We make him the odds-on 3/10 favourite for the tie.
Should the Dutchman Van der Voort manage to go the distance and put together the ultimate performance, he’s a 5/2 shot to make the semi-finals.
Even with a -3.5 leg handicap, we’ve got Durrant as the 4/5 favourite. Both Durrant and Van der Voort have been impressive with their ability to hit a maximum this week, and you can find 4/7 on over 12.5 180s in the match.
All odds and markets correct as of date of publication.
