Peter Wright won the William Hill World Darts Championship for a second time as he defeated Michael Smith 7-5 in Monday’s final.<\/p>\n
An Alexandra Palace thriller saw the lead change hands multiple times, before Wright finished strongly to lift the Sid Waddell trophy for a second time in three years, while Smith suffered a second World Championship final defeat.<\/p>\n
Smith, seeking a first TV ranking title, was in control of the contest as he led 5-4 in sets and 2-0 in the tenth set, but Wright won nine of the next ten legs to join the list of two-time World Champions.<\/p>\n
“I’m over the moon to lift this amazing trophy for a second time,” said Wright, a winner of three TV titles in 2021.<\/p>\n
“It was a difficult start to the year from me away from darts but I’ve had a great year on the oche and this tops it off.<\/p>\n
“Michael and I didn’t perform how we can for a lot of the game, but it was still an entertaining final because it was so close.<\/p>\n
“Michael is the future of darts, I feel for him tonight because I’ve been in his position.<\/p>\n
“But, I’ve got to take the chances I get and thankfully I was able to do that tonight.<\/p>\n
“I can’t explain what went wrong with my game tonight, I kept swapping darts trying to find something that worked and thankfully I had a good run at the end.<\/p>\n
“Thank you to the crowd for turning out to support us all tournament, they were amazing.”<\/p>\n
Smith was left distraught after losing his eighth televised final in nine attempts, as his wait for a first TV ranking title goes on.<\/p>\n
Despite his latest disappointment, the new world number five remains determined to break his duck in 2022.<\/p>\n
“I got five sets in this time instead of three but losing these finals is doing my head in now,” said Smith. <\/p>\n
“Tonight will be difficult but I’ll be back on the practice board soon, getting ready for the next one.<\/p>\n
“The bullseye shots for big finishes wouldn’t go in, that’s darts I guess.”<\/p>\n
Smith hit 24 180s in the match to take his tournament total up to a staggering 83, smashing the previous record of 71 set by Gary Anderson at the 2016\/17 tournament.<\/p>\n
Two of those 180s came in the opening leg, though it proved to be a nervous start from both players with 23 missed double attempts between the pair in leg two.<\/p>\n
Wright took both the opening two sets 3-1, before Smith established himself in the contest by winning the next two sets to level.<\/p>\n
Wright regained the lead by winning the set five decider, before Smith won six of the next seven legs to lead for the first time at 4-3.<\/p>\n
After Wright levelled once again, Smith regained the advantage by winning the ninth set and looked on course for the title as he led 2-0 in the tenth.<\/p>\n
However, Wright came back to win the set with a tide-turning 84 finish before whitewashing Smith in the 11th set to go back in front.<\/p>\n
The world number two continued his sprint to the finish line, with Smith powerless to stop Wright winning the 12th and final set 3-1 to seal victory.<\/p>\n
2021\/22 William Hill World Darts Championship Peter Wright won the William Hill World Darts Championship for a second time as he defeated Michael Smith 7-5 in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4302,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[943,124],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-results"],"lang":"en","translations":{"en":4301,"de":4304},"pll_sync_post":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pdc2.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4301"}],"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=4301"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pdc2.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4308,"href":"https:\/\/pdc2.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4301\/revisions\/4308"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pdc2.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pdc2.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pdc2.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pdc2.fw-web.space\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nMonday January 3 (2000 GMT)
\nFinal<\/strong>
\nPeter Wright 7-5 Michael Smith (3-1, 3-1, 1-3, 2-3, 3-2, 1-3, 0-3, 3-1, 2-3, 3-2, 3-0, 3-1)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"