The RyDov Cup, where the Tour began all those years ago, has staked its claim as both the marquee event of the year and also the final event of the year.

It is revered by all who have played in it, and each year brings a new story line, greater intrigued and fantastic competition and camaraderie.

The 2024 edition is no different, yet in many ways it is, it is the 10th match played and with that comes a level of expectation never really felt before. The Tour have also marked this occasion by diverging from the traditional selection method and have created a team of Founding players to face off against a team of newcomers and have put two players that epitomize the Tour entirely, Andy Love and Paul Gowens, in charge of them.

We’ve heard the team announcement, we’ve witnessed the verbal sparing of the Captains, now we’ve unleashed EuroDov Reporter on 9 years’ worth of RyDov Cup records and thousands of sheets of data from Tour events to give us a blow by blow prediction from each match so sit back, enjoy and get ready to argue your case against EuroDov Reporter.

Match 1 in the morning singles features Andy Love v Graeme Connor.

Love has done exactly what everyone expected and led from the front. In 2023 when he was the challenging Captain, he took the exact same approach and won 4&3 to set the standard for Team Love.

That year he faced defending Captain Kevin Brannan, but in 2024 he’ll play Team Gowens’ Vice Captain, Graeme Connor.

Let’s look at their stats head-to head. Straight off Love has 2 more appearances than Connor, stretching back to the inaugural tournament in 2013. If we look at the Singles performances Love also has the upper hand winning 79% of his matches compared to Graeme Connor’s 70%.

Andy Love’s only defeat was way back in 2020 and Graeme Connor needs to go back to his 2019 debut to mark down his last defeat. In fact, these pair are 3-3 in the last 3 appearances and this match could be one of the hardest fought all day.

Love is going to enjoy a sizeable handicap advantage over Connor which is going to require him to be on his game come the 7th September. We’re going to see two top-10 players from the OTR out there and it’s going to be a battle.

They’ve both got a track record of winning, but more importantly Andy Love has a strong track record of being players with handicaps significantly better than his. It’s going to be a battle out there, but I am going to give this one to Team Love’s Captain.

Team Love 1- 0 Team Gowens