that’s a fun thing about darts, you have guys who go into freefall in their 20s but then you have others who don’t even emerge at the top level until their 40s. there are players in the top 50 in the world who are well into their 50s in age and played their first world championships back in the 90s when i was a kid watching it on the bbc.

at the other end of the spectrum, another exciting thing about the game right now is that arguably the best teenager in the world is female. women’s darts has made some strides lately and a woman beat a couple of men at the world championship a few years back, but this kid beau greaves is a different animal, so that’s gonna be interesting to follow.

that’d be phil taylor, the greatest ever (won 14 of the last 25 world championships). he’s from my town! and you may be thinking of simon whitlock, the aussie number 1 for many years (although overtaken recently), actually won them the darts world cup for the first time in 2022.

there are still plenty of bullseyes hit in darts though, and a lot of the biggest checkouts require you to finish on it, it’s not like players can just avoid it consistently. i actually think if they were constantly aiming at it at the end of every leg it’d take away from the thrill of when it does get hit.

realistically there are several other players who have that kind of ceiling too. if we can see the version of price that won the worlds and dominated the grand slam, the world title-winning level from wright, 2020 era van den bergh (untouchable for a bit), world title-winning level from cross (seems to be slowly coming back), 2021 version of clayton, plus continued progression from other ridiculous talents like humphries, van duijvenbode, dareisay beau, etc, and we could have a golden age on our hands. i’m sure we won’t see all of those players peaking at the same time, but if even a couple of them do alongside the 3 mentioned then it’s gonna be carnage! and i haven’t even mentioned cullen, noppert, aspinall, searle, de sousa, r smith, heta etc, all of whom have a hell of an A game.

that’s simple: it’s because he couldn’t spake.

I CAN'T SPAKE. I CAN'T SPAKE.

Feels like I've been waiting for this day for half my life. So proud of my boy! It's hard to explain to those who don't watch darts all year round just how many agonising disappointments this man has gone through to get to this point. Given that to my mind he is probably one of the top 3 most naturally talented darts players to ever live, his career, while still very good, has been a series of calamitous near misses which unfortunately came to define him and weigh upon him. Many of us always said that if he finally got over the line in a big one, as he did in the grand slam two months ago, the floodgates would open.

Well... here comes the flood.

yeah. many of us were saying that once he gets the first one the floodgates are gonna open, and so it's proving! in terms of natural talent he's top 2 or 3 all time IMO, now he's got his head right i'll be quite surprised if this isn't the most common WC final pairing over the next decade.

Click here for the "greatest leg in darts history" everyone will be mentioning.