Grand Slam of Darts

Great stuff from Sherrock

Good to see the crowd behaving themselves during her match too, very little booing of Clemens from what I heard

I agree that beating Mensur and Wright/José is unlikely; but the route of beating Mensur and two matches at the Worlds isn't really out of the realm of possibility, especially if she gets a good draw at the Worlds.

That would put her on £45k, which based on the current provisional rankings including the WC would be 60th place. Then it's just a case of hoping that she doesn't lose more than 4 places from those below her getting lots of money.

Rodriguez is very mediocre but a good show by Wade. Did it for his country no doubt!

Wright making things very hard for himself, playing very poor

Suljovic is making a right balls of this

They both are. Playing well below their best

Thought Suljovic would have no problems on winning this one

Well I thought she had a great chance, but I'm a fan of hers, so I would be biased :)

Odd the way you meet the player from your group in the last 8 if you both win first knockout match. Was this covid/pod related?

I wasn't even thinking of Fallon, it applied to every group. They could easily have had no repeat pairings until the final if they so wished. Just thought it was unusual.

The format is terrible as it effectively breaks it down into 4 mini-competitions - one person and one person only from Groups A & B will be in the semi-final, ditto C/D etc. As said it's always been like this.

My understanding is it harks back to the first few years of the Grand Slam when they had 3 headline players (Taylor, Lewis, Barney, obviously seeded 1,2,3) and they didn't want the situation to arise whereby the three of them would end-up in the same half of the knockout draw because the wrong one came second in their group. Their dream outcome was a Lewis v Barney semi and the winner playing PT in the final.

Doing it 'properly' always risked the Euro 2020 situation whereby a couple of the 'wrong' teams won the group and we ended up with Belgium, Portugal, France, Italy & Spain in the same half, and England v a bag of spanners in the other half.

UEFA Euro 2020 - Wikipedia

Thats not really a reason, as you could still maintain the different nights thing. e.g., from tonight we have two players qualifying from Groups E & F (Wright and Sherrock) and two from Groups G & H (Smith and MVG/Ando). Instead of E and F playing in the quarters and having a repeat pairing, you could easily mix them into G & H at this stage. Two guaranteed new match-ups and everyone is still on the same schedule.

What’s up with Anderson the whinging moan bag. Should have just gotten on with it and taken the leg!!

TbL

Great game though, proper old school with both of them near their best.

No, it's just down to how the Slam works in the knockout stages. It's the only way to ensure that the seeded players will play 1/8 2/7 3/6 4/5 in the knockouts, assuming both make it through their groups.

I was sure the marker had gotten it wrong aswell, I'm glad to read that as I thought I was going mad 😂