2008 PDC World Darts Championship
| Ladbrokes.com World Darts Championship | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Tournament information | |||
| Dates | 17 December 2007–1 January 2008 | ||
| Venue | Alexandra Palace | ||
| Location | London | ||
| Country | England, United Kingdom | ||
| Organisation(s) | PDC | ||
| Format | Legs (preliminaries) Sets (from Round 1) Final – best of 13 |
||
| Prize fund | £605,000 | ||
| Winners share | £100,000 | ||
| High checkout |
170  Mervyn King Wayne Mardle James Wade
|
||
| Champion(s) | |||
 John Part
|
|||
|
|||
The 2008 Ladbrokes.com World Darts Championship was the 15th World Championship organised by the Professional Darts Corporation since it separated from the British Darts Organisation. The 2008 event began on December 17, 2007 (a tradition for the event to begin in the previous calendar year) and the final was played on New Year's Day for the second year in succession. There was no play on December 23, 24, 25 or 31.
John Part won his third World Championship, beating the qualifier Kirk Shepherd 7-2 in the final. He joined Phil Taylor, Raymond van Barneveld, Eric Bristow and John Lowe as the only people to have won more than two world titles, although they have since been joined by Martin Adams. He is also one of five players to have won the PDC World Darts Championship more than once, along with Phil Taylor, Adrian Lewis, Gary Anderson, and Michael Van Gerwen. In addition, he became the first player to have won World Championships in three different venues; the Lakeside, the Circus Tavern and the Alexandra Palace.
Raymond van Barneveld was the defending champion having won the PDC World Championship at the first attempt in an epic final against Taylor in 2007. He was knocked out in the third round with a 4-2 loss to Kevin Painter.
Taylor failed to reach the final of the competition, for the first time in PDC World Championship history, after losing 5-4 to Wayne Mardle in the quarter-finals.
After being staged at the Circus Tavern in Purfleet for 14 years, the tournament moved to the Alexandra Palace in London. The championships had been considered to have outgrown the Circus Tavern whose capacity of 800-900 spectators was considerably smaller than some Holsten Premier League darts events in 2007 which saw crowds reaching 5,000. The Alexandra Palace was the venue of the News of the World Darts Championship between 1963 and 1977 and boasts a capacity for 2008 of 2,500.
...
Wikipedia