You have won the Grand Slam of Darts, you are heading to Alexandra Palace for the Worlds – does everybody think you should win it all? It is fair to say that a lot of people do.
Of course, on the basic rule of sporting form, if you win the penultimate major before heading to the World Darts Championship, you are going to be firing and feeling confident.
You have just shown you can hold your nerve under pressure, you know how to dig deep and fire in the winning darts.
Now, you just have to do it all again. Simple, right? It depends what, if any, effect one victory has on the chance of the other.
Is it just that a big win such as the Grand Slam creates a change in the variable that is a player’s confidence level and there is a correlation between the two big wins? Or would a player simply not have won the Worlds without winning the Grand Slam in an example of cause and effect?
The answer to this probably varies player to player. Luke Humphries and Michael Smith would say that winning majors in the lead-up to their maiden Worlds wins were vital. Others would just say showing form in one leads to form in the other just a few weeks later.
Then there is the situation in which there seems to be no link between the two at all.
What is clear though, is that if you pick up a Grand Slam victory, people believe that your chances of leaving Ally Pally in January on top of the darting world heighten.
Phil Taylor (2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2014)
Taylor is the most decorated player in darting history and the Grand Slam is a stage he loved, winning six times in seven years.
On two of those occasions, when he won the Grand Slam, he went on to win the big prize too in 2009 and 2010.
The five times he didn’t go on to win the Worlds, victory came for John Part in 2008, Adrian Lewis in 2011 and 2012, Michael van Gerwen in 2014, and Gary Anderson in 2015, Taylor finishing as runner-up against the Scotsman.
Scott Waites (2010)
Waites won two BDO World titles from 2013 and 2016 but never won a World Championship as a PDC player. His 16-12 Grand Slam victory in 2010 against James Wade had no effect on his Worlds-winning chances.
Raymond van Barneveld (2012)
Van Barneveld has one PDC World Darts title to his name which came in 2007 in a 7-6 victory over Taylor but this was five years prior to his maiden Grand Slam win.
That came in 2012 in a 16-14 thriller against the ‘Green Machine’.
Michael van Gerwen (2015, 2016, 2017)
Van Gerwen has won the World Darts Championship three times in his illustrious career and on one of those occasions, he had won the Grand Slam before picking up victory in the biggest show of them all.
This was when he claimed a 16-8 win over Wade in the 2016 Grand Slam and then went onto defeat Anderson 7-3 at the Worlds in January 2017.
His other World Championship wins came in 2014, a year prior to his first Grand Slam victory, and 2019, when he did not feature in the final of the Grand Slam in November 2018.
Gerwyn Price (2018, 2019, 2021)
Price is a player that loves the Grand Slam, picking up victory on three different times of asking, making him the joint-second most decorated player in the tournament’s history with Van Gerwen.
However, his Grand Slam wins did not line up with his Worlds win, which came in 2021. He did not pick up victory in the Grand Slam 2020, which was won by Jose de Sousa.
José de Souza (2020)
De Sousa has not progressed past the last 16 at the Worlds and so when he won the Grand Slam in 2020, he did not capitalise and turn his momentum into glory at Ally Pally.
Indeed, he went out in the third round after entering the tournament as the 14th seed.
Michael Smith (2022)
Over the past couple of years, the trend really starts to come into force that the Grand Slam winner goes on a run at the Worlds.
Smith picked up a huge major win at the Grand Slam of Darts in 2022, defeating Nathan Aspinall in a dominant 16-5 win.
That was a milestone moment in his career and after losses in the final of the World Darts Championship in 2019 and 2022, he finally won in 2023 in a 7-4 classic against Van Gerwen, hitting an incredible nine-darter on the way.
Luke Humphries (2023)
In a similar story to Smith, Humphries picked up what was touted as a crucial Grand Slam win on the way to being crowned world champion.
In his second major in the space of 42 days, Humphries defeated Rob Cross 16-8 to keep his run going.
This then led him onto the Worlds in which he came out on top 7-4 against Luke Litter, cementing himself as the sport’s best.
Now, it is time to see if whoever is crowned this year’s Grand Slam winner follows the path of Smith and Humphries.
How can you watch?
The Grand Slam of Darts is live every day on Sky Sports from Novmber 9-17 as Luke Humphries looks to defend his title, with Beau Greaves and Noa-Lynn van Leuven also taking part.
Attention then turns to the turn of the year and the 2025 PDC World Darts Championshipbeginning on December 15, as the darts calendar continues to provide excitement throughout the year – and you can enjoy the very best here live on Sky Sports.
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