This year will be the 29th staging of the World Matchplay and it’s as wide open as its ever been. Conditions will be absolutely melting inside the Winter Gardens, Blackpool and those involved will have to handle these extremities to triumph over the next week or so. Our darts expert will be looking at the outright market and picking one player from each quarter of the draw who could give you a run for your money.
PDC World Matchplay Darts 2022
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World Matchplay starts Saturday 16th July
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Live on Sky Sports Action
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Action starts from 7pm
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‘Cool Hand Luke’ has been one of the players of 2022 so far and has become a real winning machine. He’s already amassed four titles on the Euro Tour this year and has won a Players Championship event on the floor too. He has a terrific record in the World Championships having reached the Quarter Finals in three of the last four years and is surely a major winner in waiting.
He made his debut in this event last year and thumped James Wade 10-3 in the first round with a 101.08 average before being beaten relatively comfortably by Krzysztof Ratajski in the next round. His confidence has never been as high as it is currently however and it will need to be as some our coining the second quarter as the ‘Quarter of Death’. Included in this section is reigning Premier League Champion Michael Van Gerwen, Premier League runner-up Joe Cullen, and recent World Cup winner Damon Heta and previous World Matchplay champion James Wade. He also faces a very tough opponent in a resurgent Nathan Aspinall in arguably the tie of the first round.
Given the calibre of the opposition he could face just to reach just the Semi-Final it would be quite the feat to prevail this year. Having said that he’s the most in-form player in the field, had some decent runs in the recent Players Championship series of events and whitewashed Michael Van Gerwen 7-0 on the Euro Tour not long back. This big maximum hitter is supremely talented and I can envisage him being the one to prosper in this section and giving Peter Wright the most to think of in the top half. Winning a major is his biggest next challenge.
Peter ‘Snakebite’ Wright is the defending champion this year having won this at a canter in 2021. He was absolutely sublime last year and it was arguably one of the finest tournament performances ever witnessed as he averaged 104.91 in destroying the field. He’s drawn in Quarter One and will be happy enough with his opening round draw when he faces off against the talented and improving Latvian, Madars Razma.
The World Number One and reigning World Champion started this year in decent form and looked superb for a large part of the early season but he’s not been quite as good of late. Having almost looked nailed on for a place in the final four of the Premier League he amazingly couldn’t see it through and got caught by Joe Cullen, missing the cut to make finals night. In the most recent set of tournaments – four Players Championship events held this past weekend he looked to be returning to form with some terrific performances. He averaged 100.60 across the events, finding the Treble 20 with relative ease, and racked up 100+ checkouts, with twenty-three of them in the fourteen games he played. All facets of his game looked decent and with seven 100+ averages in his last eleven games he looks capable of a making bold show to defend his crown.
He faces a potential stiff test in the Quarter Final with likely opponents Jonny Clayton or Dimitri Van Den Bergh lying in wait. He defeated the latter in the final here when victorious last year and despite them both being capable of turning him over, neither will hold any fear for him either. He’d be the main selection of my picks having been there and done it.
In a relatively short PDC career to date ‘Voltage’ has already won the two biggest prizes in World Darts, the World Championship, and this event back in 2019. He fell at the first hurdle in defence of his crown in 2020, losing 8-10 to Gabriel Clemens then last year fell at the second hurdle to Callan Rydz by a Scoreline of 8-11.
Cross suffered three first-round exits in four of the Players Championship events last weekend but continues to play to a very decent standard. He’s notched up nine 100+ averages in his last nineteen matches and has reached two Euro Tour finals. He ultimately lost both of them to the aforementioned Luke Humphries but there’s no disgrace in that.
It’s arguable that the third quarter is the weakest section of the draw with the main seed being Gerwyn Price. He hasn’t reached the heights we’ve become accustomed to of late and the same remarks apply to number seven seed José De Sousa – a potential second-round opponent for Cross – who’s remarkably out of form. He averaged less than 90 across the four recent Players Championship events and exited either in the first or second round of each.
The biggest threat potentially in this section is Dave Chisnall who has been relatively impressive in recent weeks. He can blow hot and cold however and just when you think it’s all coming together for Chizzy he often gets overturned. Cross is more consistent and I think that reliability could be enough to put him in the mix for the title in a wide-open quarter. He represents excellent each way
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Tip: Rob Cross E/W @ 15.0
Another player who is enjoying a successful season and similarly to Luke Humphries he has a claim to being the player of 2022. We didn’t see him until late in the season due to him becoming a father for the first time but he’s made up for lost time in devastating fashion. The former BDO World finalist claimed the UK Open crown in March defeating Michael Smith in the final despite being the overwhelming underdog.
He’s played well all year as a 73% match win percentage in 2022 demonstrates and this includes being in form now too. He reached the final of the Dutch Darts Championship on the Euro Tour at the end of May, where Michael Smith exacted his revenge in that final in another last-leg shoot-out between the pair. In June he then reached the Semi-Final of both the World Cup of Darts and the Dutch Darts Masters on the World Series.
More recently he won Players Championship event 19 last weekend defeating both James Wade and Luke Humphries en route to that success before defeating another in-form player, Andrew Gilding in the final.
The draw has been relatively kind, pitting him against Brendan Dolan in Round One, albeit Dolan defeated him in his most recent game 6-5 before going on to surprisingly claim the title in the last event before the prestigious tournament. His Northern Irish opponent has been underwhelming this year, something he expressed after his success the weekend and should Noppert advance to Round Two, the prospect of facing Gary Anderson or Daryl Gurney will not daunt him as neither are setting the world alight.
Bigger problems lie ahead after this but he won’t be looking ahead that far at this stage and success for him here on the back of his UK Open triumph would represent another huge step for this quickly rising star of the PDC. His odds seem a little overpriced for a player in such form.
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How to watch the PDC World Matchplay Darts?
📅 When is World Matchplay Darts? / Saturday, 16th July 2022 from 7pm
🏟 Where is World Matchplay Darts? / Winter Gardens (Blackpool)
📺 What TV channel is World Matchplay Darts on? / Sky Sports Action
