John Lowe
Trina Gulliver
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Trina Gulliver leads 4 of 4 categories. Our all-time ranking places John Lowe at #5 and Trina Gulliver at #7.
The case for John Lowe
The only player to win world titles in three different decades — 1979, 1987 and 1993 — from seven world finals, across a career that bridged the pub era and the professional one. Old Stoneface was the technical antithesis of Bristow: unhurried, expressionless, orthodox in stance and grip, and admired by coaches as the model throw. He added two Winmau World Masters and a News of the World title among more than ten televised majors, and on 13 October 1984 he threw the first nine-dart finish ever seen on television, at the MFI World Matchplay against Keith Deller, closing 180, 180 and treble 17, treble 18, double 18 for a prize of £102,000 — an enormous sum for any British sportsman of the period. He was among the sixteen players who broke away in 1992 to found what became the PDC, and he remained competitive on television into his fifties.
The case for Trina Gulliver
The most decorated champion in the women's game and the most repeatedly dominant player on this list after Taylor. Gulliver won ten world championships — the first seven consecutively from 2001 to 2007, then 2010, 2011 and 2013 — reaching at least twelve world finals in a career that ran alongside her work as a carpenter and joiner. She was the inaugural Women's World Champion when the BDO introduced the title in 2001 and defined the event for more than a decade, adding a long list of Winmau World Masters, World Trophy and international titles among more than twenty televised and major championships. Her significance is not only the trophies: for most of her career the women's game had almost no prize money, no television and no professional structure, and she sustained a world-class standard anyway. Every subsequent breakthrough — Fallon Sherrock at Alexandra Palace, the PDC Women's Series, Beau Greaves — is built on the visibility she created.