Jul 8

Jul 8 Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor : The Greatest Darts Player of All Time

Phil Taylor - The best Darts player that ever lived.

Phil Taylor is, without doubt, the greatest darts player of all time and has a real claim to being one of the greatest sportsmen who ever lived.

Phil Taylor, greatest darts player of all time throws a dart — Phil Taylor - The ‘Power’ as James Wade watches on

‘The Power’ retired after the PDC World Championship in 2018, after threatening to for a few years, and we take a look at just what made his career so special.

Phil Taylor’s Early Life

Taylor was born in Stoke-on-Trent, England in 1960 and played darts casually as a youngster, but never took up competitive to darts until the age of 26.

His talent was spotted early by professional darts player Eric Bristow, who owned a pub which Taylor played in, and the 5-time BDO World Champion gave Taylor £10,000 to help get his professional darts career off the ground. Taylor turned pro in 1987 and never looked back.

Taylor’s BDO Professional Career

Taylor started his career with the then only professional darts body, the BDO, and saw almost immediate success, winning the BDO World Championship on his first attempt in 1990 beating his mentor Eric Bristow en route to the final.

The Englishman kicked on from here, winning Open Events all across the world in 1990 as well as the BDO World Masters, which at the time was seen as the second biggest event in world darts.

Taylor’s first world title defence did not go quite go as planned as he lost in the 1991 quarterfinals, but he would recover from this to regain the title in 1992 by beating Mike Gregory in the final in what was a very tight match.

PDC Professional Career

After rising to the top of the game under the BDO, Phil Taylor joined other top players in founding the WDC (later PDC) in the well documented split in professional darts.

At the inaugural PDC World Championship, Taylor lost to Dennis Priestley in the final, which would be the first and last game Taylor lost in darts’ premier competition until 2003 when he finally went down to John Part 7 sets to 6.

This run stretched 8 years, and saw Taylor wipe the floor with some players who themselves are regarded as some of the all-time greats, resulting in a seemingly unbeatable 8 World Championship victories in a row.

Taylor quickly regained his world title in 2004, and again went on a great run, also winning the 2005 and 2006 editions.

It was around this period that Raymond van Barneveld entered the PDC, and looked to be Taylor’s greatest aver challenger, which he proved in 2007 when he put in a stunning performance against him in the World Championship final to steal the Englishman’s crown.

2008 saw the Taylor fail to make the PDC World Championship final for the first time, after he lost in the quarterfinals ending a stunning 14-year run.

Taylor regained his title in 2009, and again in 2010. The latter of which was possibly the greatest year of Taylor’s career, in which he one pretty much everything there was to win.

The rise of the likes of Michael van Gerwen amongst others, saw Phil Taylor’s major tournament wins become more sporadic. He would go on to win one more world title in 2013 before bowing out of the sport in 2018 after a defeat to Robb Cross in the PDC World Championship final.

Phil Taylor’s Greatest Moment

There are hundreds of incredible moments in Phil Taylor’s career and that makes it extremely difficult to pick just one out. From his first PDC World Championship win that started everything off, to the unbeatable 16th with many more incredible moments in between, any moment could have made it here.

But for historical context alone this honour goes to the 9 dart finish he achieved against Chris Mason at the 2002 World Matchplay. Not only was it the first of 10 televised 9-darters achieved by Taylor during his career, but it was the first 9-darter ever televised on British television.

He achieved it with the standard 3 x T20; 3 x T20; T20, T19, D12, and was awarded £100,000 for the achievement.