Michael van Gerwen

Michael van Gerwen (born 25 April 1989) is a Dutch professional darts player.

Michael van Gerwen was born on 25 April 1989 in Boxtel in the Netherlands.

He played football as a defender until he was 12 and began playing darts regularly at 13.

He reached the final of the Primus Masters Youth event at the age of 14 in 2003.

He then started to amass youth titles in 2005 including the German Open, German Gold Cup, Norway Open, Northern Ireland Open, Swedish Open and the Dutch National Youth Championship; which he also defended in 2006.

He also won the Men's events in the Norway and Northern Ireland Opens in the same year that he took the youth titles.

Before he became a professional darts player, he worked as a tiler.

He won the 2006 World Masters and threw a televised nine-dart finish at the 2007 Masters of Darts, becoming the youngest player to do both, aged 17.

He reached the semi-finals of the Bavaria World Darts Trophy in 2006.

Despite losing to Martin Adams, the Dutch youngster came within one dart of the perfect nine-dart finish, just missing double twelve.

He did manage the highest possible checkout of 170 during the tournament.

He managed to eclipse that performance at the 2006 Winmau World Masters by becoming the youngest ever champion.

Having trailed 1–4 and 2–5 to Adams, he came back to win the title and took Eric Bristow's record as the youngest ever winner at the age of 17 years and 174 days.

His early career success led to speculation that he would join the other professional circuit of darts, the Professional Darts Corporation.

However, during the 2006 World Darts Trophy, van Gerwen held a press conference to make it clear that he wanted to stay with the BDO/WDF.

He also finished top of the DDF (Dutch Darts Federation) Rankings, which would have secured him a place at the PDC World Championship, if he chose to accept.

He had already committed to playing at Lakeside, so the place went to Rico Vonck, who finished second in the rankings.

This included the Open Holland in 2006, in which he took the title.

He made his PDC debut on 20 January at the non-televised Stan James Players Championships in Gibraltar and beat Andy Hamilton before losing in the last 16 to fellow countryman Roland Scholten.

In the second Players Championship the following day, he beat Raymond van Barneveld in the early rounds only to lose to Alan Warriner-Little in the quarter-finals.

He followed up his victory over van Barneveld by beating 13 times World Champion Phil Taylor by 3 sets to 0 on the opening night of the Masters of Darts tournament.

All three sets went to a deciding leg which van Gerwen clinched with 14, 12 and 12 darts.

He went on to reach the semi-final of the tournament and achieved a perfect nine-dart finish against van Barneveld, but lost the match.

Van Gerwen was the bookmakers' pre-tournament favourite to win the 2007 Lakeside World title, but his hopes were ended in the first round by Gary Robson.

On the night of the 2007 BDO World Championship final, it was announced on Dutch television that Van Gerwen, along with Jelle Klaasen and Vincent van der Voort, would be switching to the Professional Darts Corporation.

Van Gerwen started at 88 in the PDC World Rankings.

Although he was a BDO player he was eligible for certain PDC events in his home country, even before he switched to the PDC.

His televised PDC debut came at the 2007 UK Open, where he lost in the last 32 to Colin Osborne.

However, after this initial burst onto the darting scene, van Gerwen struggled for consistent form until his breakthrough year in 2012.

Improving from world number 38 at the start of 2012 to number four at the beginning of 2013, he won his first major PDC title at the World Grand Prix and reached the final at the 2013 World Championship.

He is currently ranked No. 2 in the world, having been No. 1 from 2014 to 2021.

He is also a three-time PDC World Champion, having won the title in 2014, 2017 and 2019.

Van Gerwen is regarded as one of the greatest players of all time.

Van Gerwen began playing darts at the age of 13.

In 2014, at the age of 24, van Gerwen became the youngest winner of the PDC World Championship, a record he still holds, as well as being one of only five players to win it more than once.

He also holds the record for the highest three-dart average in a televised darts match, with 123.4.

He dominated darts in subsequent years, winning 18 tournaments in 2015 and 25 in 2016.

Van Gerwen is the second most successful player in PDC history, behind Phil Taylor.

He has won the most PDC Pro Tour events, winning 88 as of March 2024 and as of 31 October 2023 he has won 159 singles titles worldwide.

Van Gerwen picked up several Open titles and rose up the BDO/WDF World Rankings having climbed to third before his 18th birthday.