Jonny Clayton lifted his first individual televised PDC title at the Ladbrokes Masters, defeating Mervyn King 11-8 in the final in Milton Keynes on Sunday.<\/p>\n
A World Cup winner for Wales alongside Gerwyn Price in 2020, Clayton’s landmark victory at the Marshall Arena also secures him a Premier League debut in 2021.<\/p>\n
The popular Welshman averaged 104.1 in the final, maintaining the clinical finishing he displayed throughout the tournament to defeat King in a shoot-out for the final Premier League spot.<\/p>\n
Clayton’s route to the final was a dramatic one, coming through last-leg deciders against Jose de Sousa, Michael van Gerwen, James Wade and Peter Wright to reach The Masters’ showdown.<\/p>\n
“To get over that winning line in my first individual final is an amazing feeling,” said Clayton, who picks up \u00a360,000 as champion.<\/p>\n
“It wasn’t the best of matches, we’ve both played better in this tournament but that was to be expected given what was at stake.<\/p>\n
“I was so glad I didn’t have to play another deciding leg. At one stage I thought Mervyn was going to take me all the way.<\/p>\n
“He went to sleep for a couple of legs and I took advantage to go in front, from there I played pretty consistent.”<\/p>\n
Clayton had a brief taste of the Premier League stage as a ‘Challenger’ in Cardiff in February 2020, but will now feature alongside the likes of Price, Van Gerwen and Wright as part of the line-up.<\/p>\n
“I was hoping for a place in the Premier League, but to hear it confirmed on stage after I won was amazing,” Clayton continued.<\/p>\n
“I’m over the moon to be in it. I really am chuffed to bits.”<\/p>\n
A final between two players seeking a first individual televised PDC title saw 2014 Masters runner-up King start well, landing checkouts of 128 and 110 to take a 5-3 lead, but Clayton responded with a 136 finish on his way to taking the next six legs to go 9-5 up.<\/p>\n
Back-to-back 80 checkouts saw King halve the deficit but it was to be Clayton’s day as the world number 18 closed out victory with a 12-dart leg.<\/p>\n
“I can’t explain what happened because I haven’t got a clue,” admitted King, also the runner-up at the Players Championship Finals in November.<\/p>\n
“One minute I felt right and the next I didn’t. It was very on and off. I started to fall asleep in the semis against Gerwyn and got away with it.<\/p>\n
“I was just hoping hit maybe I could force a last leg but all credit to Jonny he played some cracking darts, fair play to him.<\/p>\n
“Hopefully I’ll be back again fairly soon.”<\/p>\n
Finals Day saw the quarter-finals take place in the afternoon session, as Clayton fought back from 9-6 down to defeat James Wade 10-9 with a near-faultless display of finishing as he hit ten doubles from 11 attempts.<\/p>\n
In the evening’s semi-finals, Clayton won another last-leg shoot-out against reigning champion Wright to book his place in the final.<\/p>\n
King also won 11-10 in the last four to halt the charge of world number one Price, who suffered his first defeat as World Champion.<\/p>\n
King had seen off Nathan Aspinall in the quarter-finals with another strong display, which had seen him lead 9-0 before closing out a 10-3 success.<\/p>\n
Price averaged 105 as he defeated Adrian Lewis 10-6 in the last eight, while Wright overcame Dave Chisnall 10-5 after storming into an early 5-0 lead in their clash.<\/p>\n
2021 Ladbrokes Masters Evening Session Final<\/strong> Jonny Clayton lifted his first individual televised PDC title at the Ladbrokes Masters, defeating Mervyn King 11-8 in the final…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2786,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[943,124],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-results"],"lang":"en","translations":{"en":2785,"de":2788},"pll_sync_post":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pdc2.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2785"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pdc2.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pdc2.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pdc2.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pdc2.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2785"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pdc2.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2787,"href":"https:\/\/pdc2.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2785\/revisions\/2787"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pdc2.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pdc2.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pdc2.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pdc2.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nSunday January 31
\nAfternoon Session
\nQuarter-Finals<\/strong>
\nMervyn King 10-3 Nathan Aspinall
\nGerwyn Price 10-6 Adrian Lewis
\nPeter Wright 10-5 Dave Chisnall
\nJonny Clayton 10-9 James Wade<\/p>\n
\nSemi-Finals<\/strong>
\nMervyn King 11-10 Gerwyn Price
\nJonny Clayton 11-10 Peter Wright<\/p>\n
\nJonny Clayton 11-8 Mervyn King<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"