Daryl Gurney produced the finest performance of this year's William Hill World Darts Championship last night as 'Superchin' cruised to a 3-0 victory over Ross Smith and the bookmakers were suitably impressed with the Northern Irishman's performance and have cut him from 33/1 to 25/1 to lift the Sid Waddell Trophy on January 1.
Averaging 100.3, Gurney dominated his opponent from the outset and his heavy scoring saw Smith struggle to land a glove on Gurney, who has booked a third round tie with last year's semi-finalist Jamie Lewis.
Gurney will want to iron out his double-hitting as he only managed to bang in nine doubles in 27 attempts, so there's room to improve for the number five seed, who could have to face both Gary Anderson and Michael van Gerwen en route to the final, but the recent Players Championship winner has shown that he can produce the goods in the major events, so it would be no surprise to see him fighting it out for glory in the latter stages of the event.
Elsewhere on Tuesday, Dimitri van den Bergh breezed into the second round with a 3-0 win over Chuck Puleo, while Dutch thrower Vincent van der Voort outclassed Darren Webster 3-0 in their afternoon clash and the fast-throwing star will face either Steve Beaton or Chris Dobey in a mouth-watering third round clash.
We are treated to a sparkling day of action today with the highlight this afternoon being Joe Cullen's clash with Brendan Dolan, while this evening we see Simon Whitlock, Michael Smith and James Wade all take to the oche in some fascinating second round matches.
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