Eric Bristow was the best darts player on the planet. Five World Championships. The world number one ranking for most of a decade. Sid Waddell compared him to Alexander the Great on live television. And in 1988, at the height of his powers, he spent roughly ten thousand pounds of his own money on a ceramics factory worker from Stoke-on-Trent who was earning fifty-two pounds a week making toilet roll holders.
What Phil Taylor did with that money — and what it cost Bristow to watch it happen — is the reason people still argue about who the greatest darts player in history actually is.
Taylor learned to throw at a pub Bristow owned. Bristow shouted at him, slammed phones down on him, and refused to speak to him unless he had won. Then on January 13th, 1990, the master and the student met in the World Championship final at Lakeside. Taylor averaged 97.47. Bristow averaged 93. The student won six sets to one. And every record Bristow had ever set — the average record, the world title record, the world number one record — Taylor eventually took.
When Bristow died of a heart attack outside the Echo Arena in Liverpool on April 5th, 2018, Taylor’s tribute ended with a single hashtag: sixteen. One for every world title his mentor had made possible.
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