How it unfolded
Phil Taylor had won the PDC World Championship eight years running, from 1995 to 2002, not dropping a set in some of those finals. No one looked able to stop him. John Part, from Ontario, Canada, had won the 1994 BDO World Championship to become the first world champion from outside Britain, then moved to the PDC, and had been thrashed by Taylor in the 2001 final. The 2003 final went the opposite way. Part kept pace with Taylor's scoring, and the match went to a thirteenth set. Part took the final set, and the last score was 7-6. Taylor would start a year without a world title for the first time since 1995. Part became the only man to hold world titles from both organisations, added a third in 2008, and later moved into commentary, teaching a generation of viewers how to read checkout routes.
Why it still matters
This is the match that first proved Taylor was not unbeatable. More important than the streak simply ending was who ended it: a player who crossed the Atlantic every time from a country with almost no darts infrastructure. This win signalled that the sport's talent pool was not fixed to Britain and the Netherlands, and it marked the start of the flow of Canadian, Australian and Asian players who would later reach Alexandra Palace.