PDC World Darts: 3 impressive outsiders to watch post-Xmas break
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Phil Taylor and Michael van Gerwen take an awful lot out of the market at the PDC World Darts Championship as 2/1 and 11/4 first and second-favourites, but as we’ve seen in recent years, the two best players don’t always reach the final at Ally Pally.
There has already been a major shock involving the last of the challengers listed below. Are any of them worth backing each-way at 1/2 odds first two? Maybe.
We all know what the only seeded member of this list can do after Smith pulled off probably the biggest shock in PDC history by downing Taylor in the second round last year, checking out a 128 with the bullseye to win the match.
The 24-year-old goes into his next clash as 4/9 favourite to beat handy Ulsterman Brendan Dolan.
This promising youngster took his time about seeing off veteran two-time champion/part-time commentator John Part in the first round, but he raced into a two-set lead rather impressively against the Canadian before being pegged back.
It’s a measure of how highly the 22-year-old is rated that another double champ, in Adrian Lewis, is a backable price at 1/5 to beat Brown in the next round, with the Durham native at 7/2.
If Smith’s victory over ‘The Power’ was an earthquake, then this German greenhorn’s 3-2 triumph against number 10 seed Mervyn King in the first round of this year’s tournament rates pretty highly on the Richter scale too.
Better yet for 18-year-old Hopp, unfancied 125/1 shot Vincent van der Voort awaits at the next stage, after the Dutchman’s ‘rubbish’ (his word) 3-2 win over John Henderson.
Hopp is 6/4 to spring another upset, and put it past him we would not.
All Odds and Markets are correct as of the date of publishing.
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