World Darts Championship: Who will challenge for the title in five years?
Tuesday 5 January 2016 12:56, UK
Legendary champions Phil 'The Power' Taylor and Raymond van Barneveld will still be at the World Darts Championship in a year's time, but what about when they hang up their arrows?
With so much young talent coming through, the Alexandra Palace landscape is likely to look very different in five years' time, so we asked Sky Sports expert Wayne Mardle to look into his crystal ball and predict who will be in the 2021 semi-finals.
Flying cars? Living on the moon? Not quite, but brace yourself for one notable absence...
Michael van Gerwen
Mardle said: He'll be the world No 1 in 10 years. It's pushing it to suggest that he won't. He's just different to anything we've seen, he's special.
What people don't think about is that Michael was the No 1 in the BDO at the age of 16 or 17 when he won The Masters. He was the favourite to win the BDO World Championship in 2007. He didn't win that, then he came over to the PDC in 2008 and it went wrong for him.
He'll be the world No 1 in 10 years. It's pushing it to suggest that he won't.
For five years he was on a downward trend, he needed a lot of help from Vincent van der Voort to keep going. He was more or less sponsoring Michael, and since then they've been tried-and-trusted friends. They joined the PDC together and Vincent hit the ground running but Michael didn't.
Michael had a lot of expectation on his shoulders and found it hard to cope. So people don't realise that he's been through real hardship. That means that everything he has now, he's worked for and appreciates. He knows he doesn't want to ever feel like he did back in 2008 - lack of belief, no confidence, no money.
He respects what he's got now and he'll fight to keep it, without just relying on ability like some players have. He's got Phil Taylor-like determination. One world title isn't enough. He's never said 'I've achieved everything' even though he has. He's a success and that will continue for at least seven years.
Adrian Lewis
Mardle said: I don't think Lewis can get better than he is now. But he will mill around and be very good for the next 10 years. His level now is clearly good enough to be in the top few players in the world.
He won't be going anywhere, he's only going to be 35 in five years. I wrote down his age the other day and couldn't believe it. In five years he will have been around for 15 years and, although I don't see him at the top, I see him within the top four.
James Wade
Mardle said: He's only 32 and has got the right mentality. We didn't see that at the World Darts Championship against Gary Anderson when his action went, that was a bad day at the office and that can happen. Wade will definitely be around in five years, and maybe 10 years.
He's one of these steady types. He's this generation's John Lowe except he's never won the world title. Wade has got the game whereby if his opponent if off, he will win, and Lowe was like that.
Michael Smith
Mardle said: The player from outside today's top few that will perforate is Smith. He's got it - he's got what you need. The reason is his action and that is undervalued and undersold in darts. People say 'he's a great player because the dart goes wherever he aims it'. There's more to it than that.
Stephen Bunting, for example, is a great player but when push comes to shove he couldn't hold his action together in the World Darts Championship against Raymond van Barneveld. Smith will occasionally lose his action but he's only 25-years-old and he's on the up.
There's more to darts than just throwing it, and from the minute that Smith picks them up from the left hand to the right, it's rhythmic. It's like a pendulum, just like Van Gerwen. They bring the hand back, they follow through, they release the dart well. Something has to go wrong with Smith's belief for him to never win a world title.
But, where's Gary Anderson?
Mardle said: I don't think there's a possibility that Gary Anderson will be at the top of his game. He has been a brilliant player from the very early 2000s. Can he be around for 20 years at the top? I'm not convinced but I also wasn't convinced that Phil Taylor could do it. Taylor and Van Barneveld are absolute dart freaks to still be so good, but I think it's impossible for anybody else to do that.
There might be a couple to penetrate the players that I've guessed. Daryl Gurney, I think, has a great future. I'm not convinced about Keegan Brown at the moment because he has regressed. Brown hit the ground running and has found it hard to keep up that standard. We want him to do well because he's a great character and he's not intimidated, he has a winner's mentality but he's not playing well.
