Michael van Gerwen
Raymond van Barneveld
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Dead even across the measured categories. Our all-time ranking places Michael van Gerwen at #2 and Raymond van Barneveld at #4.
The case for Michael van Gerwen
The best player of the post-Taylor era and the most naturally gifted thrower the sport has seen. Van Gerwen won the Winmau World Masters in 2006 at 17, becoming the youngest world champion of any description at the time, then took three PDC world titles in 2014, 2017 and 2019 from five finals, seven Premier League crowns and three World Matchplays among more than 25 televised majors. His statistical peak is unmatched: the highest televised three-dart average in history, 123.40 against Michael Smith in the 2016 Premier League, and the highest average in a World Championship final, 114.05 in the 2017 win over Gary Anderson. He held the world number one ranking continuously for roughly seven years from early 2014. Where Taylor's dominance was built on relentless accumulation, van Gerwen's was built on speed and a scoring ceiling nobody else could reach — he throws fast, rarely reconsiders, and at his best simply outscores opponents into irrelevance.
The case for Raymond van Barneveld
The man who turned darts into a mainstream sport in a country that had barely played it. A former postman from The Hague, Van Barneveld won four BDO world titles in 1998, 1999, 2003 and 2005, crossed to the PDC in 2006, and won the 2007 world final against Phil Taylor 7-6 in a sudden-death leg at the Circus Tavern — a match still routinely voted the greatest ever played, in which he came from 3-0 down in sets. Five world titles from six finals puts him level with Bristow and behind only Taylor among men. He added the 2012 Grand Slam of Darts and the 2014 Premier League among more than ten televised majors. His real legacy is national: Dutch television audiences for his matches ran into the millions, participation exploded, and the pipeline he opened produced Michael van Gerwen, Jelle Klaasen, Danny Noppert and a generation for whom being a professional darts player was a plausible ambition.