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Phil Taylor

Alexandra Palace, Alexandra Palace Way, London, UK

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Phil Taylor won 16 World Darts Championship titles across his career, split between the BDO and PDC organizations after darts split into two competing governing bodies in the early 1990s, a title total so far ahead of any other player in the sport's history that it's rarely even discussed as a close debate. Nicknamed "The Power," Taylor dominated the PDC World Championship specifically, winning 14 of his 16 titles under that organization between 1994 and 2013, a nearly two-decade stretch of near-total control over the sport's biggest annual event that reshaped professional darts into a genuinely lucrative professional sport during his prime. Taylor's rivalry with fellow Englishman Eric Bristow, who had originally mentored and sponsored the young Taylor before the two became fierce on-stage rivals, produced some of the most closely followed matches in the sport's history during the 1990s, as the student steadily overtook and then surpassed his own mentor's championship total. Taylor's combination of mental consistency under pressure and remarkable longevity — he remained a top competitor into his mid-50s — made him the player most credited with transforming darts from a pub-culture curiosity into a genuine televised professional sport with major sponsorship and prize money.

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