World Darts

But what did Santa bring the great and good of darts for Christmas?
I’ve been behind the scenes to find out!

It goes from the expensive, to the bizarre, to the ridiculous, so here goes!

Chris Mason was given an Armani watch by wife Lorna but on Boxing Day, Kevin Painter called time on Mason’s World Championship with a 4 sets to nil thrashing. Painter’s best gift…..the latest Chubby Brown DVD! A little bit of a difference but ‘The Artist’ got what he really wanted by brushing aside Mr Mason!

Alex Roy was delighted to get a portable DVD player, to take with him on the PDC Pro Tour to stave off the boredom, while Steve Maish was given a copy of Sid’s book ‘Bellies and Bullseyes’ which he has nearly finished already!

Andy Hamilton was given a new set of hair clippers – don’t know why, because even he admits there isn’t much to clip these days!

Keith Deller went up market with a new leather jacket, while Rod Harrington went all technical with a new laptop and PDC Tournament Director Tommy Cox was given VIP tickets for a big Joe Calzaghe dinner in the North East.

The top prize for the most bizarre present was split between PDC Press Officer Dave Allen and MC John McDonald. The hard-working Allen became the ultimate company man when he got a pair of PDC underpants!

McDonald is mad keen on greyhound racing….in fact, he owns six racing dogs and he received a special cook book – about preparing special meals for man’s best friend! Apparently, John is often known to spend his Sunday morning cooking up tasty new recipes for his dogs!

Sky commentator Dave Lanning has a bit of a reputation for enjoying the finer things in life….well on Christmas Day, he decided to go for a stroll along the beach in Poole to walk off the turkey and was delighted to be stopped and offered a cold glass of champagne! Only the best for our Dave!

Obviously, quite a few of the overseas players stayed in London for Christmas. Dutchman Erwin Extercatte and Canadian John Part played a bit of poker and put in an hour or so, on the practice board.

Irishman Mick McGowan had a close shave. The PDC rules state each player has to be at the venue at least two hours before the scheduled start time of their match.
McGowan flew out of Dublin early on Boxing Day morning, arrived at Gatwick at noon but the taxi he had booked was late turning up. If that wasn’t bad enough, it was traffic chaos and the journey from the airport to the Ally Pally took an hour-and-a-half. He finally got here with just 15 minutes to spare.
But his misery was compounded when he missed four darts for the match against Kirk Shepherd and lost his 2nd Round match by 4 sets to 3.

Finally on this blog, a heart-warming tale about 10-year-old Matt Lustig….his Dad Lawrence is one of the top sports photographers in the UK and does all the pictures for the PDC at all the big darts tournaments.
On Boxing Day, he brought Matt along and the youngster took some shots of all the action, only to beat his dad and get a picture of Kevin Painter published in The Sun on Thursday! Good on you Matt!

More stories from the Ally Pally on the way, so stay in touch with the Courage Best website.