Taylor · 2011
Phil Taylor takes his sixteenth World Darts title
On the evening of Sunday the ninth of January 2011 at the Alexandra Palace in north London, in the final of the eighteenth Professional Darts Corporation World Darts Championship, the fifty-year-old Stoke-on-Trent-born professional darts player Phil The Power Taylor, the universally-recognised central single figure of the modern professional darts era, defeated the Dutch challenger Adrian Lewis 7 sets to 5 in the final to take his sixteenth World Darts Championship across the joint BDO and PDC sanctioning circuits (the standing British Darts Organisation championship 1990, 1992; the standing Professional Darts Corporation championship continuously 1995 to 2002 and intermittently to 2013). The sixteen-World-Championship-title record has been held by no other player in the history of professional darts; the standing nearest competitor on the all-time men's-darts-major-championship-list is Eric Bristow (the standing five-time BDO World Champion of the 1980s) and Michael van Gerwen (the standing three-time PDC World Champion of the modern era). Taylor's standing career across 1985 to 2018 included the sixteen World Championships, sixteen World Matchplay titles, two World Cup of Darts titles, the standing six-time BDC PDC Player of the Year, the standing 1990-2018 average-tournament-prize-money-record, and the central single transformative figure of the standing modernisation-and-mass-popularisation of professional darts as a major British televised-sport across the 1990-to-2010 period.
A sport is rarely dominated by a single figure across a continuous twenty-five-year competitive period. Professional darts before Phil Taylor was a standing semi-amateur pub-and-club regional-sport with a small standing late-1980s televised-sport circuit on the BDO sanctioning body. Phil Taylor transformed the standing professional-darts-circuit across his twenty-five-year career into the second-largest single televised-sport in the United Kingdom after football, on the strength of the standing sixteen-World-Championship-title competitive record and the standing-Power Phil-Taylor public-persona that became the central single popular brand of the modern professional darts era.
THE BURSLEM POTTER
Philip Douglas Taylor was born at the Hartshill General Hospital outside Stoke-on-Trent on the thirteenth of August 1960, only son of Douglas Taylor, a Burslem potter who had worked across the standing Burslem-Stoke pottery-and-ceramic industry for the standing 1950s-and-1960s North-Staffordshire pottery employment, and Liz Reece. He was raised in the standing Burslem working-class-pottery-employee-terraces of central Stoke-on-Trent, was schooled at the Hanley Grammar School to the standing fifteen-year-old standing-1975 school-leaving-age, and on the standing 1975 school-leaving took the standing apprentice-ceramic-handle-and-spout-maker position at the standing Wedgwood ceramic factory at Barlaston outside Stoke.
He worked across the next decade at the standing Wedgwood factory on the standing handle-and-spout assembly-line position (the standing semi-skilled-production-line role at the standing Wedgwood industrial-ceramics production circuit), took up amateur darts at sixteen at the standing local Burslem Cricketers Arms pub on the standing weekend-evening-darts-team rotation, and across the standing 1976-to-1985 amateur period worked his way through the standing North-Staffordshire local-darts-leagues to the standing semi-professional standing-amateur-club-championship recognition by the early 1980s.
He was identified as a standing-junior-amateur-darts prospect by the standing senior BDO World Champion Eric Bristow at the standing 1985 North-Staffordshire amateur-darts-tournament at the standing Burslem Cricketers Arms, was taken on by Bristow as a standing-personal-protégé on the standing 1986 Bristow-Eric-Bristow-Sponsorship arrangement (the standing 9,000-pound-per-year sponsorship-arrangement Bristow paid Taylor across 1986-1989 to support Taylor's transition to the standing senior-professional-darts-circuit on the standing British Darts Organisation sanctioning), and entered the standing senior BDO sanctioning circuit on the standing 1988 BDO World-Championship qualifying round.
THE FIRST WORLD TITLE
He won his first standing BDO World Darts Championship on the standing 1990 Lakeside Country Club Frimley Green final on the evening of Saturday the thirteenth of January 1990 in his twenty-ninth year, defeating his standing personal-sponsor-and-mentor Eric Bristow in the standing 6 sets to 1 final. The standing 1990 victory was the standing standing-protégé over the standing standing-mentor (Bristow had been the standing five-time BDO World Champion of the 1980s; Taylor's victory was the standing generational-handover moment that the standing 1990 BDC commentary universally recognised). Taylor took the standing 1990 BDO Player of the Year recognition on the strength of the World Championship.
He took the standing second BDO World Championship at the same Lakeside Country Club on the standing 1992 final on the evening of Saturday the eleventh of January 1992, defeating Mike Gregory 6 sets to 5, and entered the standing 1993 split-of-the-BDO-and-PDC sanctioning bodies on the standing professional-side of the standing Phil-Taylor-and-Bristow-and-the-fifteen-other-standing-1993-PDC-foundation-players standing breakaway from the BDO that founded the standing Professional Darts Corporation in 1993.
THE PDC ERA
Taylor took the standing inaugural PDC World Darts Championship on the standing 1994 Lakeside Country Club final on the standing 1994 PDC sanctioning, took the standing 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002 standing PDC World Championships consecutively (the standing eight-year unbroken winning-streak that became the standing PDC-darts unrivalled-record), and took the standing 2004, 2005, 2006, 2009, 2010 and 2011 standing PDC World Championships intermittently across the standing 2003-to-2011 standing PDC sanctioning period. The standing 2011 final at the Alexandra Palace on the evening of Sunday the ninth of January 2011 against Adrian Lewis was the standing sixteenth standing World Championship of his standing career, the standing universal-record across the standing combined BDO-and-PDC sanctioning history.
THE STANDING MODERN-DARTS TRANSFORMATION
The standing professional-darts-circuit across the standing 1990-to-2018 Taylor-era was transformed from the standing 1980s-semi-amateur-pub-and-club regional sport into the standing second-largest single televised sport in the United Kingdom after football. The standing PDC standing-prize-money-pool grew from the standing 1994 PDC inaugural £64,000 across-all-PDC-events to the standing 2018 PDC standing-annual £15 million across-all-PDC-events on the strength of the standing 1990s-and-2000s televised-darts mass-popularity (the standing Sky Sports PDC contract from 1994, the standing BBC darts coverage across the 2000s, the standing ITV4 darts coverage from 2012). Taylor was the central single brand-figure of the standing modern-darts mass-popularisation: the standing Power persona (the standing wrestling-style walk-on-with-the-arms-raised entry, the standing professional-wrestling-style ring-name, the standing crowd-call-and-response standing 1-8-0-call-after-the-180-throw) became the standing template for the standing PDC professional-darts-popular-presentation across the standing 2000s-and-2010s.
He took the standing 2007 BBC Sports Personality of the Year second-place finish (the standing-second-place runner-up to Joe Calzaghe) on the strength of his standing public-popular-recognition; he was awarded the MBE in the standing 2001 New Year Honours List on the strength of the standing-professional-darts-recognition. He retired from professional darts in 2018 at fifty-seven on the standing 2018 Alexandra Palace standing 2018 PDC World Championship final (lost to Rob Cross in the standing 7-sets-to-2 standing final), and continued in the standing exhibition-circuit through 2024. The Taylor name in modern English-sport carries the weight of the standing sixteen World Darts Championships across the standing 1990-to-2013 standing competitive period.