The Prince of Wales conquers the Scotsman in Dublin

Well there was I saying there won’t be any shocks, the favourites will happily navigate the first round and everyone will be able to make plenty of easy money at the bookies, but then the magic of the World Grand Prix continued to throw up some serious surprises on night two, and one that eclipsed the biggest shock of the opening evening.

Performance of the Night

An average of 84 is very unlikely to win you a performance of the night crown often, but Richie Burnett thoroughly deserves it as he came back from the brink of defeat to beat Gary Anderson 2-1.   

The Welshman’s story has been well documented, beating Barney to become World Champion over in the BDO way back in 1995, then retiring from the game and ending up in the dole queue just a few short years ago.  But now he is back and having won the Players Championship in Nuland at the end of last month, netting himself £6k, he sneaked into the Grand Prix and has not wasted the opportunity as he sent the Premier League champ packing.

It didn’t look like he was going to get anywhere near the Flying Scotsman after Anderson romped to victory in the first set without conceding a leg and even had darts to win the contest in the second set, but the Prince of Wales has some real steel in him these days and he doggedly fought back to claim the match by three legs to one in the final set.

As is often the criticism of Anderson, it was his missed doubles that cost him as he took twice as many attempts to hit his six finishes as Burnett did to hit the same number.  The Scot’s scoring was as good as ever as five maximums proves, but hitting six out of 22 at a finishing double is poor by anyone’s standards.  Not to take anything away from the Welshman though who deserved the win and moves on to take on the Heat.

Runner-up

Another coupon-buster for me was Alan Tabern’s typically hard-fought 2-1 win against Dave Chisnall.  Along with Burnett’s shock win, this one saw my betting slip join the growing pile of cans on my living room floor as I tossed it away in disgust, but in retrospect it is only admiration you can have for the Saint.

As far as darting talent goes Chizzy is the far superior as his incredible eight maximums to Tabern’s none shows, but you have to love a scrapper and Alan is up with the best of them.

Chisnall blew him away in the first set, but Tabern simply never gives up and like in the Anderson match, although the players shared the same number of legs over the match, it was the man from St Helens who scraped through, winning the final two sets by a single leg.

Bronze Medal

The second match of the evening was certainly one of two halves and one that saw Mark Hylton’s ever enhancing reputation further improve as he defeated Mark Walsh 2-1. 

Walsh is a really solid player in the PDC nowadays and a tough first round opponent for anyone and it looked like he was cruising to victory as he won the first set without reply, but Mile High fought back to pinch the second and then whitewash Walshy in the final set to turn the game on its head.

It was a fairly low quality match to be fair, with Special Brew averaging under 80 which is rare to see, but Hylton’s unorthodox style continues to work for him.  Whether it will prevail when he comes under the spell of the Wizard in the next round is yet to be seen though.

And the Rest…

It is rare that Phil Taylor is left to the round-up at the bottom, but in all fairness to Peter Wright it is no surprise that the Power emerged victorious, the only shock was that it was a tight affair that finished 2-1.  Taylor started poorly and Wright was finishing superbly, taking the first set 3-1, but the world number one stepped up a gear in the second and third set and finished with a stunning average of 102.26.

Arguably the highest profile game of night two saw two Premier League stars in Simon Whitlock and Terry Jenkins square-off and it was the big Aussie who eventually prevailed 2-1 although it is fair to say he didn’t entirely convince despite picking up a good win.

Dennis Ovens continued his impressive year with a fairly routine 2-0 win over Jamie Caven despite Jabba producing a stunning 170 check out.

Mark Webster proved once again why he deserves to be so highly ranked in the Order of Merit as he came through one of the toughest first round matches to beat Andy Hamilton 2-1.

Finally the Asset Paul Nicholson saw off the challenge of Ronnie Baxter 2-0, despite me tipping the rocket for a win.

The line-up for round 2 looks like this:

Newton v Henderson
Wade v Van der Voort
Van Barneveld v Smith
Part v Dolan
Webster v Tabern
Whitlock v Hylton
Taylor  v Nicholson
Burnett v Ovens