Although possibly not (such a late finish) at this pace. Astonishing darts from both men. Taylor checks out from 170 to take the second leg, MVG from 140 to take the decisive 5th. Only one 180 in the set yet they've played 5 legs in 15 minutes flat.
Has Roger Federer ever played at 11.30pm at night in a last-32 match?' Well, I imagine he has because Federer is a superb athlete who excels in a cruelly demanding and utterly authentic sport.
Don't know about Federer specifically but it isn't uncommon at the Australian Open particularly for players to be playing until about 2:00 in the morning, and some games have gone far later than that.
Sadly I missed the PDC final as I was on holiday but it sounded absorbing.
Collins is half right. Taylor is not great in the way that Wiggins, Botham or Coe are great. However, the game requires a bit more than a "pub game" expertise. Does anyone claim that archery, where the skills are similar, is not a sport?
I think tennis players are as fit as a sportsperson can be. You don't get 15 minute breaks and you might be playing for 6 hours in 100 degrees, yet still whacking the ball with incredible force. It would be interesting to know how many miles Federer covers in a game, albeit not as many as Xavi.
I watched the BDO for about an hour today before the first 180 was hit. The standard is awful when you're used to the proper darts. At least Adams is out.
The BDO will always suffer by comparison with the PDC in the opening few days because the last PDC match you see is the final, with the two best players playing at the peak of their game - which is always going to be much higher in quality than the opening round of any tournament, where you have rookies and nervous qualifers, and even the top players will take a bit of time before they really hit their stride.
There's no doubt that the PDC has stronger players overall, but I'd say it's also true that if you were to watch the first round of the PDC championship straight after the BDO final you'd see a drop off in quality there too.
The BBC coverage is clearly not as slick as Sky's, but it does have one thing going for it that I'm surprised Sky haven't adopted - on the score display they have a running total of a player's score as he's throwing his darts. I really like that.
Barney threw a 108 average in the PDC first round, there was some excellent darts. Kim Huybrechts averaged 99 and lost, even the first round of the PDC features a lot of high quality darts.
Of the 13 matches to have taken place at the Lakeside so far, only two players have scraped their average above 90. Compared to roughly half in the PDC first round.
The two games I saw were the end of Adams-Hendriks and all of Mitchell-Barilli. They were both absolutely appalling. Admittedly, looking at the averages not all the BDO games have been that bad, but then they're hardly unique either.
I remember sitting in a friend's house nearly 15 years ago, watching van Barneveld beating Ronnie Baxter in the BDO world final. Last night I watched him edge past Jamie Caven and it struck me that he looks almost exactly the same as he did in 1999.
I watched ten minutes of this earlier during half time of the Arse -Chelsea game and it just looked like the darts was pretty much providing some background to a massive piss up.
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