“Break my heart”
Darts legend Phil Taylor announces retirement
November 21, 2023, 7:52 a.m
“The Power” doesn’t want any more. Now 63 years old, Phil Taylor’s sporting future is finally over. The 16-time world champion wants to play on the senior tour for just one more year and then call it a day unless a miracle happens.
Darts legend Phil Taylor is retiring from competitive sports after next year. The 16-time world champion announced this on Monday through his supplier Target. “I’ll be retiring from competition at the end of next year – unless I throw a nine-darter every time, then you’ll have to drag me out,” Taylor is quoted as saying.
The 63-year-old Taylor ended his PDC career after the 2018 World Cup, where he lost to Rob Cross in the final. Since 2022, however, he has been back on the oche on the newly created senior tour. However, at the two World Championships last year and this year, “The Power” was eliminated in the quarterfinals.
“When you no longer perform as well as you can, it breaks my heart,” said Taylor, who is planning the coming season as a kind of farewell tour. To achieve this, the Englishman also wants to appear in several show tournaments, as he has already done several times. He wants to stay in the sport of darts, which he dominated for over a decade and almost single-handedly raised to a new standard.
Only five defeats in 21 World Cup finals
“It was a good journey. But now it’s time. I’ll be 65 years old in 2025,” said Taylor, who won a total of 85 major titles and became a multi-millionaire through darts: “This decision is both a physical one as well as a spiritual decision.”
The 2007 World Cup final between Raymond van Barneveld and Phil Taylor is still one of the greatest games in darts history even 16 years later. The Englishman had repeatedly compared the games against the Dutchman with the clash between “Mike Tyson against Muhammad Ali” or the football games between “Holland and Germany in the World Cup final”.
In 2007, van Barneveld decided the final in the sudden death leg. The final at that time catapulted the sport of darts into new spheres. For Taylor it was one of only five defeats in a total of 21 World Cup finals.