Darts: Peter Wright wins final to become two-time world champion

Peter Wright lifts the Sid Waddell trophy for the second time in his career
(photo from the PDC)

Last Monday saw Peter ‘Snakebite’ Wright win final of the World Darts Championship, seeing off his opponent, Michael ‘Bully Boy’ Smith to claim his second world title.

When the highly anticipated match began, Wright was able to win the first set comfortably. Smith's only leg in that set was, quite literally, the worst of the tournament, as both players had double trouble in scenes that even a pub player would have found ridiculous. Smith eventually found double one to cap off a 28-dart leg, but it was Wright who successfully re-composed himself to bounce back afterwards and go into the break 1-0 up. When in the second set also went Wright’s way, it looked as though the match was running away from Smith.

Yet when the two returned to the oche after the second break, Smith was able to find a way back into the match, and a closely-fought tussle ensued. First, Smith won the next two sets to level the game at 2-2. Wright then got back in front at 3-2, but Smith proceeded to level at 3-3 before going ahead himself at 4-3, only for Wright to make it 4-4. With little to separate the two and the game gradually approaching its conclusion, it appeared that the ninth set would be key. It would go to all the way to a fifth leg, in which Wright, after narrowly missing a 170 checkout (t20, t20, then missing the bull and hitting single 19), was left on 31 to take the set and go ahead once more. But, in his next two visits, Wright was unable to hit a double, allowing Smith to checkout on double 13 and go 5-4 ahead. When Smith then went 2-0 up in the tenth set, it looked as though the momentum had decisively shifted – ‘Bully Boy’ was now within touching distance of a 6-4 lead and, with it, a set from victory.

Wright, who had been trying to find the right setup throughout the match (changing his darts three times, a high turnover even for a perfectionist like Snakebite), now needed to find his best performance if he was to rescue his chances of a second world title. And what came next was quite simply, to use a favourite line of Michael van Gerwen’s, ‘phenomenal’.

Of the last ten legs of the match, Wright won nine of them, making it 5-5, then 6-5, and finally 7-5, hitting double 16 (first dart, no problem) to checkout 32 and take the title. Looking at the statistics of those nine legs won by Wright makes them all the more remarkable. He not only won them, but produced incredible darts to do so, with one 15 darter, one 14 darter, four 13 darters, and three 12 darters, averaging over 110 in the process.

Of course, on the receiving end, Smith couldn’t quite believe it. Having now lost his sixth televised title, he was visibly teary in his post-match interview, remarking ‘I must have done something terrible in a past life because it’s doing my head in now’. Wright, equally emotional and drained after three tight games to reach the trophy, was full of praise for his opponent, declaring Smith to be ‘the future of darts’. And Wright is right – Smith, having knocked out Jonny Clayton, Gerwyn Price, and James Wade to reach the final, has played very well in this tournament. If he keeps his head up, no doubt another chance at a major will come.

But this should not take away from the main story – this night belongs to Peter Wright. ‘Snakebite’ is now a two-time champion of the world, which would have seemed almost unbelievable just over two years ago. Then, Wright, much as Smith is today, was cast as the ‘nearly-man’ of darts, having come up short in twelve televised finals before. Of these, nine were losses to van Gerwen, of which the most harrowing was arguably the 2017 Premier League, when Wright missed six match darts to take the title. All that changed, however, at the 2020 World Championship. Perhaps it was the 140 checkout to stay alive against Noel Malicdem in the second round that changed things around for Wright. Whatever happened, Wright’s 7-3 victory over van Gerwen in the final, avenging those defeats on the biggest stage of them all, has completely transformed his career. Since then, Wright has won the Masters, the European Championship, the World Matchplay, the Players Championship Finals, and now a second World Championship.

There is a great message in Wright’s career – that, whatever happens, you should never give up and, with persistence and commitment, ultimately things will come good. And, now standing only £15,000 away from world number one Gerwyn Price in the rankings, Wright has every chance of raising his game and career further in the year ahead.