Taylor Crashes out of PDC World Championships

Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor’s bid to land a 16th world title was ended last night as Mark Webster sent him crashing out of the tournament at the quarter-final stage.

Webster gained the advantage early on in the tie and held his nerve to close out a 5-2 victory over The Power who hadn’t looked at his best throughout the early stages of the event. 5-time World Champion Raymond van Barneveld was also beaten by Gary Anderson earlier in the evening meaning we are guaranteed a new name on the PDC trophy later this week.

Webster’s reward for beating the recent Sports Personality of the Year runner-up is a semi-final match-up against Adrian ‘Jackpot’ Lewis. Lewis booked his place in the last four with a comfortable win over Simon Whitlock’s conqueror Vincent van der Voort.

The bookmakers make Jackpot the slight 4/5 favourite whilst Webster is an 11/10 shot to build on what was the biggest result of his career last night.

In the other semi-final Anderson will play Terry ‘The Bull’ Jenkins after he beat Wes Newton in a 5-4 thriller during yesterday’s afternoon session.

The Bull showed all his battling qualities to make it to his first PDC World Championship semi-final. However, Newton didn’t have the relentless power scoring aspect to his game that Anderson possesses and Jenkins is likely to have to find another level to his own game if he is to continue his run in the event.

The bookmakers certainly seem to agree and make Anderson the 1/6 favourite to go through to the final. Jenkins is 5/1 to stop the tournament’s most impressive player so far.

With Taylor now out of the competition the four remaining players will now believe that they can be crowned the world champion, dealing with that pressure could be a key deciding factor of who emerges triumphant.