Willie Borland Hit The First Ever Walk-Off Nine Darter At The World Darts Championship

The PDC World Darts Championship is back in full swing across the pond. Each year, 96 of the best darts players alive head to Alexandra Palace in London to earn the title of the world’s best, and while the best stuff usually happens later on in the tournament when the lesser-regarded players have been eliminated, an absolutely scintillating match between Scotland’s Willie Borland and England’s Bradley Brooks ended in the most dramatic way possible.

The pair of unseeded youngsters needed a fifth and final set in their first to 3 match to determine who would move on to play 15th seeded Ryan Searle. Both played well all game, and after Borland jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the leg, Brooks battled back to force a deciding fifth leg.

There, we got one of the coolest sports moments of 2021. Borland did not just register an ultra-rare nine-dart finish — which signifies that a player cleared the board in as few darts as possible in a game of 501 — he became the first player in the history of the tournament to have one in a match-winning situation.

Again, nine-darters are darts’ version of a perfect inning in baseball, so to get one at any point in a match is as rare as it gets. But to get it in this fashion is legitimately unprecedented. As a result, the Ally Pally exploded, and Borland got to say he won the match of the tournament.