John Part

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John Part

Personal information
Nickname	Darth Maple
Date of birth	June 29, 1966 (1966-06-29) (age 41)
Place of birth	Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Home town	Oshawa, Ontario, Canada
Darts information
Playing darts since	1987
Darts	23g Golden Unicorn John Part
Walk-on music	The Imperial March (Darth Vader's theme from Star Wars)
Organisation (see split in darts)
BDO	1991 to 1997
PDC	since 1997
Current World Ranking	4 (Jan 2008)
BDO Grand Slam Events - Best Performances
World Ch'ship	Winner 1994
World Masters	Last 16, 1995, 1997
PDC Majors - Best Performances
World Ch'ship	Winner 2003, 2008
World Matchplay	Runner-up 2002, 2005
World Grand Prix	Runner-up 2002, 2003
UK Open	Runner-up 2004
Desert Classic	Winner 2006
Other Televised PDC events - Best Performances
Grand Slam	Quarter-final 2007
Premier League	6th, 2005
US Open	Semi-final 2007
Other Tournament Wins
Tournament	Years
Syracuse Open Ontario Singles Canada Cup WFD World Cup Pairs Blueberry Hill Open Motor City Open Canadian Pairs Quebec Open Windy City Open Canadian Singles Cleveland Extravaganza Canadian Open Klondike Open Las Vegas Open Eastbourne Open WDF Americas Cup Irish Classic Vauxhall Spring Open Vauxhall Fall Open Golden Harvest Cup Players Ch'ship Players Ch'ship	1991 1992, '93, '95, '98, 2002, 2003, 2007 1992, 1994, 1995, 1997, 1998 1993 1993, 2000-2002 1993, 2001-2003, 2006 1994-1996, 2002-2004, 2007 1994, 1996, 1999, 2002 1994, 2002, 2003 1995, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2007 1995, 1997, 2002 1995, 2001, 2004 1996, 1998 1998 2000 2002 2002, 2003 2002, 2003 2003 2004 2007 2008
Other Achievements
PDC World Number 1 January to June 2003 Member of Oshawa Sports Hall of Fame
Infobox last updated on: January 19, 2008.

John Part (born June 29, 1966 in Toronto, Ontario) is a Canadian darts player, who is nicknamed Darth Maple. He is the current PDC World Darts Champion, having won his third world title on New Year's Day 2008^[1].

Part's first world title came at the 1994 BDO World Championship and he later won the other version of the world title, the PDC World Championship in 2003. He was the first non-British player to win each of the titles.

1 Early career
2 Rise to Fame
3 Lean Years
4 PDC Success
5 Television Commentary
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Early career

Part was given a dartboard by his parents as a Christmas present in 1987 ^[2] which gave him the bug to take up the game. He found a pub to practice in Toronto – ironically called ‘The Unicorn’ (also the name of his current sponsor) – and success soon followed. He won his first title in 1991 at the Syracuse Open and two years later, Part was Canada’s No.1 player.

Another big win came at the 1993 Blueberry Hill Open at Chuck Berry's restaurant in St. Louis, Missouri. He regularly plays the Open to this day.

[edit] Rise to Fame

Part was transformed from an unknown Canadian to the top of the game in just one week in 1994. Part had never played in front of television cameras before the 1994 Embassy World Championship and was given an opportunity following an acrimonious split in the game of darts the previous year.

There have been two different versions of the World Championships played each year since 1994. All previous world champions started up the World Darts Council (now Professional Darts Corporation) and the British Darts Organisation continued organising the Embassy World Championship, with only 8 out of 32 players from the previous year's competition re-appearing. This gave an opportunity for previously unheard-of players to participate. Part stormed through to the 1994 final losing only one set en-route. He defeated Bobby George by 6-0 in the final.

[edit] Lean Years

Part failed to capitalise on his first World title. In 1995, 1996 and 1997 he won his first round match at the Embassy World Championship - but was knocked out by Paul Williams, Steve Beaton and Roger Carter respectively in the second round.

After the 1997 Embassy World Championship, Part decided to join the PDC and initially his results were just as disappointing. His PDC debut came in the 1997 World Matchplay, losing in the first round 4-8 to American Drew O'Neill. He also lost in the first round of the event for the next three years.

His PDC World Championship debut came in 1998, winning his first group match against Paul Lim - but lost 3-1 to Peter Evison and failed to progress to the knock-out stages.

[edit] PDC Success

It wasn't until 2001, some four years after joining the PDC that Part began to make an impact on the circuit. He made it to the final of the 2001 PDC World Darts Championship losing to Phil Taylor, who averaged a record 107.46 in the final.

But Part's resurgence continued - he reached the finals of the 2002 World Matchplay and the 2002 World Grand Prix. Again, Taylor was the man who ended his run.

Part finally beat Taylor in the 2003 PDC World Darts Championship final in Purfleet. Taylor was 1/7 favourite to win ^[3], but Part took the first leg with a 121 checkout, and then roared into a 3-0 set lead. Part was still in control at 4-1 when Taylor suddenly hit form, winning 11 straight legs on his way to a 5-4 lead. Part then hit back with pressure doubles to take the 10th set and break Taylor in the final leg of the 11th.

At 6-5, with Part needing only to hold his darts to win the title, Taylor broke back to force a deciding set. However, when the crunch came, Taylor struggled to find his range and Part stayed calm to break the throw and hold on for victory.

Part became PDC world number one after his world title win in 2003 and proved himself to be one of only a few players capable of beating Taylor, when he knocked the Power out of the 2005 World Matchplay in the quarter-final. This ended a potential grand slam (winning all televised tournaments in a year) by Taylor and his record 28 matches unbeaten run in the tournament.

He dropped down the world rankings somewhat in 2005 and 2006, but still enjoyed a major championship success on 2 July 2006, when he added the Las Vegas Desert Classic trophy to his haul of championship wins, beating Raymond Van Barneveld, 6 sets to 3 in the final. Following this, Part was a consistent semi-finalist in 2007, reaching this stage in three televised events: the US Open, the Desert Classic, and the Grand Prix. He also reached the quarter-finals of the inaugural Grand Slam of Darts (losing to Taylor) and had moved back up to 11 in the world rankings by the end of 2007.

Ending a successful year, Part won the 2008 World Championship with a 7-2 victory over Kirk Shepherd, winning the first four sets on his way to victory and joining Taylor, van Barneveld, Bristow and Lowe as the only players to have won a World Championship more than twice. With this win he also became only one of two players to have won the PDC World Darts Championship more than once, the other player being Phil Taylor. John Part also became the first dart player to win the World Championship in three different venues: 1994 BDO Lakeside Country Club Frimley Green Surrey, 2003 PDC Circus Tavern Purfleet, and 2008 PDC Alexandra Palace London.

[edit] Television Commentary

Shortly after the formation of the WDC in 1994, BBC commentator Sid Waddell decided to leave the BBC to join Sky Television. This left just Tony Green as the only commentator on the event. Part is considered to be one of the games's best "counters" or "spotters" (the ability to work out scoring shots or where the next dart may be thrown). This knowledge is essential to a darts commentator and contributed to Part being chosen by the BBC to join Green in the commentary box in 1996, and he has remained a regular each year since.

Despite his decision to play in the PDC World Championship, he is still a regular in the BBC commentary box. He missed work for two days of the 2003 Embassy World Championship ^[4] due to the fact he was winning the PDC World Championship at the time.

He also missed the 2007 Winmau World Masters, a tournament which he would usually commentate on, alongside Green and David Croft, but he decided to take part in the first-ever Grand Slam of Darts in Wolverhampton instead. After 11 years in the BBC commentary box, he was not at the Lakeside Country Club for the 2008 tournament.