PDC – Grand Prix 2011 Form Guide
First Quarter
Toughest quarter of the lot. Red Dragon’s Peter Wright is on decent form. Nicholson is having a good year. Hamilton does well at the Grand Prix usually. Webster is on good form. Chisnall is definitely a wild card as well. Taylor will need to be at his best to win this quarter, so the event winner may come from here.
Second Quarter
Very tough draw for Simon Whitlock. Terry Jenkins is one of those players who is better at this event because he is so good on double top (2 finals and 2 semis in 5 years). If your betting man avoid both in this early game. At a normal event format Anderson has a favourable draw, but because Burnett has just won the Pro Tour event it could be a banana skin over best of 3 sets. Verdict Anderson has a great chance to reach the semis, but he’s suspect on doubles so this is not his ideal event.
Third Quarter
John Part is someone we’d would expect to have a better record at this event as he’s good on doubles, but it’s more about being good on one double like Terry Jenkins is. Dean Winstanley would be awesome if he was playing. There is not a great draw for Lewis. Before he reached the final last year Lewis didn’t have a great record at this event. The rest of the Quarter is favourable though. Although he’s much better on TV now, we still can’t see the other seeded player Wes Newton taking the next step to win the event.
Fourth Quarter
Tough draw for Barney, but Mervyn King is not at his best following his run of injuries. James Wade has the won the event twice in the last 5 years and gone out in the first round twice. He faces Steve Brown who is quite good on doubles and is a potential problem over best of 3, but should James win his second round is fairly favourable. We would expect him to beat Barney in a double start format if they meet in the Quarter finals (The 2 times they’ve played James has won 5-1). They are more even in normal format.
In short a lot of the 8 seeded players have very tough first round matches, but easier 2nd round matches. For those having a punt good advice would may be to wait for the last 16 draw to be known before betting. In double start it used to be that if Taylor won his first round match he won the event, but that is not true these days. His route could be Wright, Nicholson, Webster, Anderson, Lewis who have all beaten him on TV in the last 2 years (apart from Wright). He’s still obviously the favourite having won 3 of the last 5, but if pushed Wade would get our nod from the start.
Our second choice would be Lewis. With no odds on individual match betting up when we wrote this its hard to looks at individual match bets, but we would be reluctant to bet on any favourites over the short distance. Most of the players outside the top 8 are pretty evenly matched and you may not go far wrong if you bet on the outsider in every match to be honest.
Game on………..