Players to Watch...

The X Factor UK has begun again and that only means 1 thing for all us Brits, it is the countdown to Christmas! It is easy to get excited at this point because by the time we reach the X Factor final, we will be only 1 week from Christmas but there is also many drawbacks to this time of year. British summertime is now over and it’s time to turn on the heating and get out those wooly jumpers again. September is definitely one of the most depressing months of the year for us students as we all return to school or college and are thrust straight back into essays and assessments. 

Despite this, it is a very exciting time for darts players and fans alike as we have many exciting tournaments throughout the autumn and winter which of course culminate in the William Hill World Championships in December. These tournaments of course also include the World Grand Prix, European Championship, Unibet Masters, World Grand Slam and Players Championship Finals. So, you may be asking yourself, who should I look out for in these upcoming tournaments? Well you’ve come to the right place! These are the 3 players that I think could be dark horses for success in the final months of the year. 

Kyle Anderson
26 year old Kyle Anderson is an Australian darts player who has made a huge impact on the PDC Circuit in the last 12 months. Despite not making it past the 1st round in the World Championships, he introduced himself to darts fans with a fantastic 9 darter against Ian White which showed he was not afraid of the big stage. Disappointingly Anderson also exited at the first round of the UK Open, his only other Major appearance this year, but he did reach the Semi Final of the 6th Players Championship in April. His most successful tournament of the year was at the end of August in his home tournament at the Sydney Darts Masters where he defeated Raymond Van Barneveld and Simon Whitlock before losing to eventual winner Phil Taylor in the Semi Final. There is no doubt that Anderson hasn’t achieved the consistency in his game yet and he is very unpredictable, summed up by losing 6:0 to Michael Van Gerwen only a week prior to his fantastic run in Sydney. However, you won’t find a player more passionate and committed to the game than Anderson and I think he can have a really successful end to 2014 and climb up the rankings. It may be too soon for him to win his first major but he has shown he is capable of defeating some of the biggest names in darts and there is no reason why he shouldn’t reach the latter stages of a major tournament this winter. 

Stephen Bunting
It was not an easy decision for me to pick Stephen Bunting as a player to watch out for but I had to listen to my head over my heart. It’s not that I dislike Bunting personally, but as a BDO basher, I would be gutted to see a BDO World Champion walk straight into success in the PDC. However, it is clear to see Bunting undoubtedly has the ability and mental strength to be a success and he has had a fantastic first 9 months in the PDC, summed up by him reaching the World Matchplay despite having less time to qualify for the tournament. Bunting, 29, also triumphed in his 2nd ever PDC tournament in the UK Open Qualifiers earlier this year. Finally, he is in good form after reaching the final of the Sydney Darts Masters last month and today he has reached another quarter final at the European Darts Grand Prix. I therefore think Bunting will reach the semi finals in at least 1 of the majors left this year.

Gary Anderson
Gary Anderson is the 2nd Anderson in my top 3 dark horses to watch out for this winter however just to clarify, there is no relation between the two! Perhaps you may not consider Gary Anderson as a dark horse as he has been a regular in the latter stages of PDC tournaments for many years. However, Anderson’s only major victory came back in 2011 in the Premier League and he hasn’t reached a major final since the same year. Despite this, Anderson, 43, has had a fantastic 2014 which he kicked off by winning his first ranking title in two and a half years at the German Darts Championship. He then went on to win 4 more ranking events at the UK Open Qualifiers and Players Championships as well as reaching the semi finals of the Premier League and World Matchplay. The Flying Scotsman is certainly in the form of his life after significantly improving his doubling and keeping up his relentless scoring. I am very confident that Anderson will continue his form and he is definitely capable of a huge major success.

Dream Big, Work Hard

She may have been the most controversial Prime Minister in British history but Margaret Thatcher once said that “I do not know anyone who has got to the top without hard work” and I couldn’t agree more with her message. I am also a strong believer in Tim Notke’s opinion that “hard work beats talent when talent does not work hard”. I believe that you make your own luck in life, if you word hard, it will pay off.

The reason for my slightly philosophical start to this article is due to my life over the last 12 months. As many of you are aware, I took my GCSE exams this summer in the final year of high school and on Thursday, I received the results. Many students possibly see results day as an opportunity to compare themselves against their friends or even their enemies as to who has come out on top of the intelligence ladder. However I don’t have the same view. Firstly, the education system, particularly in England, doesn’t just judge your intelligence but more so it tests which student has the best memory or which student is able to write it down in the best way. In every class, each student is taught the same material and whichever student can regurgitate that information most successfully, will achieve the best results. Being successful in exams does not always mean you will be successful in life. 

On the other hand, I do think the exam season does replicate probably a more important aspect of life and that is hard work rather than intelligence. Yes, exams may be about memory but you aren’t born with a good or bad memory like some people believe. The only way to improve your memory is repetition and revision, there is no secret to hard work. In addition, discounting people with mental disabilities, I also don’t believe that anyone is born more intelligent than anyone else and I think it is your upbringing and work ethic that ultimately decides your fate.

You may still be thinking, why have I written this article for a darts website? But hard work is just about needed in every profession, hobby or sport. Without being big headed, I know if I set myself an ambitious but realistic aim, I will work hard and I will achieve it. It was about 12 months ago when I set my sights on achieving all A* and A grade GCSE’s and on Thursday, I achieved this aim with 7 A* and 5 A grades. Again there was no secret to my success other than hard work. In my opinion, my biggest success is not the grades, but I am happier about being able to say, I achieved what I aimed for and therefore, I strongly believe it doesn’t matter about your grades as if you achieved your aim, you have been successful. This is because learning to be able to achieve your objectives for the rest of your life is much more important than how good you are at analysing a Shakespeare play. 

Therefore, exams is about hard work, life is about hard work and darts is about hard work. Every single professional darts player has worked unbelievably hard to get as good as they are and I believe all that separates the best from the rest, is who works the hardest. One of my pet hates is hearing people say young players like Michael Van Gerwen or Adrian Lewis are naturally talented as they are young so haven’t worked as hard or as long as other players. Bullshit. It is actually totally the opposite as they have worked so hard that they are already so good at such a young age. Do you really believe that these people came into the world being able to hit 180’s? Yes, some people may be blessed with better co-ordination than others but dreams don’t work unless you do and the only way to improve your darts is practice and hard work.

Now I have achieved my GCSE aim, I will set myself a new target for the future. Hopefully I will get the chance to set myself a darting target soon but it is about balancing my priorities and right now, playing darts is not one of them. But once it is, I will set myself another aim and I will work hard and achieve it just like any of you have the ability to achieve any realistic aim you work hard for. ‘Dream It, Believe It, Achieve It’. You can be a future world darts champion, ‘Dream Big, Work Hard’.

World Matchplay Review

Taylor’s Blackpool Love Affair Continues

After another tantalising tournament, Taylor has done it again. 19 years after his first World Matchplay title, Phil Taylor has extended his unbeaten Blackpool run to 7 years and an incredible 35 matches. How does he do it? 

In my World Matchplay Preview, I did what no darts fan should do and doubted Taylor’s chances of winning it again. I stated that Taylor was in ‘arguably in the worst form of his life’ and announced there was a new favourite heading to Blackpool. However, I will not take sole responsibility as I doubt the great man has ever even come across my work! The whole darting world was doubting Taylor before the tournament including the best pundits in the business. Therefore, we should all take responsibility as we should have remembered that Taylor thrives off proving people wrong. 

So again lets rewind to my preview of the tournament when I was so excited for the tournament that I said it promised to be one of the best World Matchplay’s ever and from the very first round, the tournament lived up to expectations. In the first round, Taylor easily overcame Darren Webster 10:4 with a confident display which showed that he really felt at home back at Blackpool. Also in the first round, my prediction curse struck again as all 3 of my predictions for this year’s tournament went crashing out. Firstly, Vincent Van Der Voort set the tone with a nightmare performance against fellow Dutchman Raymond Van Barneveld. This was then followed up on the Monday night with Peter Wright’s underwhelming performance against an inform Steven Bunting who showed he is going to be a handful following his move from the BDO. My final prediction was Jamie Caven who did provide me with a bit of hope when he led Gary Anderson but the Flying Scotsman showed he had just enough steam to force his way past Caven and win 10:8. So after those disastrous predictions I decided to keep my expectations to myself but after Adrian Lewis’ stunning 10-0 whitewash of Andrew Gilding, I did think there could be a different ‘Stokee’ lifting the trophy. 

I think however that bizarrely my failed predictions actually show darts in a very good light. I am not trying to divert the blame here but all of my 3 predictions had won on the European Tour this year and this shows how competitive all the darts players are today and this is what makes our sport so unpredictable and entertaining. This may seem ridiculous as the same man has now won the tournament 15 times but Taylor is a force of nature and his records will never be repeated.

Moving onto the Second Round, I was disappointed that my favourite player, Andy Hamilton was narrowly beaten by Dave Chisnall. In all honestly, I never had much faith he could win his first major as despite his 10:3 first round win, his opponent Wayne Jones only averaged 82! Meanwhile the other major headlines from the Second Round were Raymond Van Barneveld losing out to Simon Whitlock, Gary Anderson knocking out Stephen Bunting and Wes Newton edging out Paul Nicholson 15:13 after a titanic tussle. However, there was 1 headline bigger than all of these as Taylor hit his 10th televised 9 darter in his 13:6 win over Michael Smith who had ironically knocked Taylor out of the World Championship 7 months earlier. 

Onto the Quarter Finals which actually produced 4 clear winners in Van Gerwen, Whitlock Taylor and Anderson, with Anderson’s 16:8 victory over last year’s finalist Adrian Lewis arguably being the best performance. This meant that 3 of the top 4 seeds had made it to the Semi-Finals which again shows why the World Matchplay is such a great tournament as the long format really gives the chance for the quality to shine through. However, it was the semi finals which probably provided the best entertainment of the tournament as both matches were fantastic contests. After 26 legs between Whitlock and Van Gerwen, it was 13:13 before Van Gerwen showed why he was World Champion by winning the last 4 legs. In the other semi final, Anderson again put on a fantastic performance against The Power but despite winning 15 legs, it wasn’t enough as Taylor eventually pulled through to win 17:15 and secure his place against World Number 1 Michael Van Gerwen in the final. 

This meant it was the final that all darts fans dreamed of but disappointingly it was a very 1 sided contest. After winning the 2nd leg, Van Gerwen was only able to win 1 more leg out of the next 11 as Taylor stormed into an 11:2 lead. Van Gerwen wasn’t playing particularly badly but he wasn’t up to Taylor’s incredible standard of averaging over 110 for the majority of the match. From 11:2 down, it was almost impossible for Van Gerwen to mount any sort of challenge and despite a small comeback at one point, he went on to lose the match 18:9 as Taylor controlled the match fantastically to win his 7th World Matchplay in a row. As Taylor was given the trophy, it was lovely to see the delight on his face as he was able to share the moment with his grandchildren but it was equally as upsetting to see Van Gerwen’s tears on stage which showed how much passion he really has for the game. 

So what can we take from the 2014 World Matchplay? Personally, I have learnt that I need to work even harder on my predictions and I think that the whole darting world have learnt again that Phil Taylor is definitely not finished. Many other sportsmen can’t see what keeps up Taylor’s motivation as he has won everything there is to win including 16 World Championships and 15 World Matchplay's! But the reason he keeps going is because he is a winner, a champion and a special darts player who just can’t bare to see anyone else winning ‘his’ trophies. I honestly don’t understand some of the criticism of Taylor I see on social networking sites and forums as every darts fan surely must have the upmost respect for what he has achieved and how he has benefitted our sport. I understand everyone has their favourite players but Taylor’s career is extraordinary and whatever anyone says, he is one of the greatest sportsmen ever and undoubtedly the greatest player to ever play darts.