PDC World Championship Day 6

Posted: 20.12.16 in Tournament Analysis Blog category

The Sun went down at the Palace!

Poor old Qiang Sun, he travelled all the way over from China, crashed down on all fours onto the stage after not noticing there was an oche in place during the pre-match handshakes. Then the Sun went down again to the Ozzie wonder kid Corey Cadby 2 zip! Oh well, hopefully enjoyed his trip anyway!

You can see the video here!

Before Corey had the chance to then take on Joe Cullen there was an epic encounter between Mervyn King and Steve West. Steve went off like a train and King was struggling to react. Merv demonstrated the attribute of “never say die” and eventually went through in sudden death. He was emotional, we were emotional, what a game!

Jackpot then thrashed the hapless Magnus Caris. Magnus has been around for ever but we have never really seen him play really well. Surely it is time for someone to knock him off his perch and get another Scandinavian qualifier over for a game.

Then it was time for Cullen v Cadby. Corey had already reversed the match odds after his prelim performance and went off odds on favourite to KO the Rock Star. Now regular readers of this blog (if there are any) will know I am not a fan of Cullen. Well what I should say is that he is a smashing guy, I am not a fan of his technique.

He is a walking, talking bill board for muscle memory. He slings over his shoulder but last night he shut me right up! He was awesome and the match was a memorable one. Whilst we are singing Joe’s praises his attitude and demeanour on the oche interested me. He is clearly a laid back guy who doesn’t get embroiled in on oche antics.

However, Corey was laying it on pretty thick when he put his superb checkouts away but Joe reacted in the right way. He didn’t attack Cadby verbally but used his annoyance at the youngster’s antics to muster up the perfect amount of adrenalin to push himself to greater heights. We noticed the same thing with Kim Huybrechts a while back. He played better when there was a slight edge to his performance.

The optimum performance level is different for each player, if you can master the level of intensity you need for peak performance and be able to reach it as and when you need it then you have a big advantage over your opponent.

Tonight we have:

Tuesday December 20 (7pm)
Boris Koltsov (7/4) v Dragutin Horvat (4/7)  (P)
Brendan Dolan (6/5) v Christian Kist (4/5)
Raymond van Barneveld (2/7) v Robbie Green (7/2)
Simon Whitlock (1/12) v Koltsov/Horvat (8/1)

I don’t know too much about the qualifiers I must admit. Dolan/Kist will be a tight one. I fancy Kist to win it but Brendan has a habit of pulling game out of the fire. A total legs interest may be safer. Barney should beat Robbie Green, but hey it’s Barney we are talking about. Hopefully the real one will turn up and show his class! Whitlock plays the prelim winner.

Tips:

Dolan/Kist Over 17.5 legs 11/10  and over 3.5 sets in the Barney game.

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