Gerwyn Price has won the 2021 PDC World Darts Championship after he defeated Scotland’s Gary Anderson 7-3 in Sunday night’s final.
Price has become the first Welshman to win the PDC World Championship and is also the first Welsh player to win a world title since Mark Webster was crowned BDO champion in 2008. ‘The Iceman’ is now the PDC world number one, leaping above three-time world champion Michael Van Gerwen. Price also receives £500,000 for winning darts’ showpiece event.
Both players traded the first two sets to make the score 1-1, leaving the match poised for a tight affair. However, Price proved far too strong for the two-time champion Anderson for the remainder of the final, winning the next four sets to move 5-1 ahead and seemingly cruising towards a maiden world title.
It looked ominous after the sixth set when it took Price just 33 darts to move within two sets of victory. He narrowly missed a double 12 in the third leg of the sixth set to complete the iconic nine-dart finish. Anderson took the seventh set to move within three of Price, but the 2019 Grand Slam champion bounced straight back to go 6-2 ahead and within one set of victory.
Price went 2-0 ahead in the ninth set with Anderson having no answers to the Welshman’s incredible finishing and high scoring. But Price finally felt the pressure of the occasion and missed nine match darts over the next three legs to hand ‘The Flying Scotsman’ Anderson the set and a route back into the match.
The Scot looked on course to continue his remarkable comeback when he went 2-0 up in the tenth set but Price clawed it back to 2-2 and yet again move within a leg of becoming the world champion. In what was a familiar tale in the latter stages of the final, both players were not able to take their chances. Anderson missed eight set-darts and Price failed to hit a further two-match darts to leave the game on a knife-edge. Price, who had missed 11 match-darts at this stage, returned to hit double five and finally get over the line and deservedly claim a 7-3 victory.
This was Anderson’s fifth world final and his third defeat (2011-Adrian Lewis, 2017-Michael Van Gerwen and 2021-Gerwyn Price). For the new world champion Price, tonight’s victory represents the highest point of his darts career since he made the transfer from the rugby pitch to the dart board in 2014.
