The 2010 BDO World Darts Championship (known for sponsorship reasons as the 2010 Lakeside World Professional Darts Championship) was the 33rd World Championship organised by the British Darts Organisation, and the 25th staging at the Lakeside Country Club at Frimley Green. Ted Hankey was the defending men's champion having won the title for the second time in the previous year's final against Tony O'Shea. The defending women's champion was Francis Hoenselaar, having beaten seven-time champion Trina Gulliver in the 2009 final.
Players from 32 countries around the globe competed to reach the BBC televised finals, which ran from 2–10 January at Frimley Green. The men's top seed was O'Shea. Julie Gore was top women's seed, ahead of Gulliver. There were 11 debutants at the world championships. Also for the first time two brothers, Tony and Steve West, were playing in the same world championship.
The tournament is also remembered for the first round match between Martin Adams and Anthony Fleet, which featured what has been called "the worst leg of darts ever". The opening leg included visits of 26, 41, 5, 41, 22 and 11 by a visibly nervous Fleet. Adams himself had visits of 47, 44 and 32, but eventually won the 54-dart leg and went on to win the match 3–0. Fleet's match average of 65.34 was the lowest of the championship and described as "pub standard".
Martin Adams won his second World Championship title, beating Dave Chisnall 7–5 in the final. Trina Gulliver won the Women's Championship for the eighth time beating Rhian Edwards 2–0.
Format and qualifiers
Men's The televised stages featured 32 players. The top 16 players in the WDF/BDO rankings over the 2008/09 season were seeded for the tournament. An unusually high total of 11 of the seeded players were knocked out in the first round.
The 32 players who qualified for invitation into the first round proper of the men's singles were:
Top 16 Tony O'Shea Scott Waites Martin Adams Darryl Fitton Ted Hankey Ross Montgomery Dave Prins Alan Norris Joey ten Berge Martin Atkins Steve West John Walton Mark Barilli Scott Mitchell John Henderson Ian WhiteOther qualifiers Willy van de Wiel Stephen Bunting Brian Woods Mareno Michels Robert Wagner Daryl Gurney Gary Robson Martin Phillips Paul Hanvidge Dave Chisnall Garry Thompson Martin McCloskey Robbie Green Tony West Paul Carter Tony Fleet
Women's The televised stages featured 8 players. The top 4 players in the WDF/BDO rankings over the 2008/09 season were seeded for the tournament.
The eight women qualified for invitation were:
Top 4 Julie Gore Trina Gulliver Irina Armstrong Karen LawmanOther qualifiers Francis Hoenselaar Linda Ithurralde Deta Hedman Rhian Edwards
Prize money The 2010 World Championship had a prize fund of £325,000 – a rise of £5,000 on the previous year.£100K top prize for men's champion Lakeside World Professional Darts Championship, 27 October 2009
Men's Champion: £100,000 (up from £95,000) Runner-up: £30,000 Semi-Finalists (2): £11,000 Quarter-Finalists (4): £6,000 Second Round (8): £4,250 First Round (16): £3,000
Women's Champion: £6,000 Runner-up: £2,000 Semi-Finalists (2): £1,000 Quarter-Finalists (4): £500
Nine dart finish: £52,000 Highest checkout: £3,000
Draw
Men's Match distances in sets are quoted in brackets at the top of each round. All sets best of five legs, unless there is a final set tie-break
Women's All matches best of three sets, best of five legs
Television coverage The tournament has been broadcast by BBC Sport every year since its inception. Having fronted their coverage since 2001, Ray Stubbs did not host their broadcasts in 2010 following his decision to join ESPN the previous summer. He was replaced by BBC Radio 5 Live and Football on Five presenter Colin Murray. Rob Walker, the Master of Ceremonies at BBC's snooker events and host of the BBC's 2009 World Masters coverage presented the late night highlights and Darts Extra through the night on BBC2. Walker was also the roaming reporter during BBC2's live coverage. Bobby George once again was the pundit.
The commentary team was David Croft, Tony Green and the tournament's number 1 seed Tony O'Shea. Again, every dart was shown live, via the BBC's interactive coverage on its Red Button service – with the semi-finals and final both broadcast live on BBC1/BBC2 on the last weekend.
In Germany the tournament was broadcast by Eurosport. There was no coverage on SBS in the Netherlands, for the first time in several years as they chose to follow the majority of their players who featured in the PDC World Championship instead.
References
External links The official site of the Lakeside BDO World Professional Darts Championship