So with 3 big TV events coming up, I thought I’d look at
some stats and see which players may be going under the radar, who has had a
good season and some surprises to look out for going into 2026.
I started looking at who might win the PDC World Darts
Championship and if there was any correlation with current form . Turns out
there isn’t really. Players that win the
Grand Slam or Players Championship Finals, don’t necessarily go on to win the
World Championship, even though it would seem that those would be the ‘in-form’
players
However only on a handful of occasions has the winner of
either of these competitions gone on to win the World Championship.
So, that got me thinking, is it more about overall
performance in the year that should be taken into account? Stage and TV
experience would also come into play, but that is subjective and opinion based.
I’m sure I could dig out specific stats for that, but I thought I would just
stick with performance stats over the year.
I took the Pro Tour, Challenge Tour and Development Tour and
then ranked all the players combined to get an overall list. I chose factors
such as season average and checkout percentage, plus a few other variables. I
then ranked players based on each variable and then totalled again.
My top 10 ranked players are as follows:
Some interesting finds then. Notice how top names such Luke
Humphries (12th) , Michael van Gerwen (28th) and Nathan
Aspinall (17th) do not appear. They have all won big tournaments
this year, but overall performance has not been as consistent. Will this play a
part for the rest of the season?
For me, the big surprise was seeing Luke Littler was not
top. Admittedly Josh Rock has been
excellent this year, and starting to the form of two years ago, where many were
talking about him as the ‘next big thing’. Even so, I didn’t think many could
touch Littler, but I’ll go with my stats and wait and see. Stephen Bunting’s great early season form has
helped to his position of 2nd, and could be interesting come the TV
tournaments, where he is a big crowd favourite.
One of highest placed non PDC Tour Card holder is Shane
McGuirk. That is a surprise too. Although he won the 2025 WDF World
Championship and is clearly as class act, I’d still expect to see others
higher, but the figures have made him the best, based on season performance. So I wonder if he can retain that title. I
reckon the bookies may overlook him (again), as well as some pundits.
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