Darts in 1990: Legs, sets and match formats

Nine darts — first achieved on television by John Lowe on 13 October 1984 for a £102,000 prize The PDC, founded in 1992 as the World Darts Council, and the World Darts Federation, founded in 1976, with member bodies in more than 70 countries Phil Taylor, 16 (two BDO, fourteen PDC) between 1990 and 2013

Darts compresses elite sport into an area smaller than a dinner plate. The scoring surface is 340 millimetres across, the treble 20 bed is roughly 8 millimetres wide, and a professional stands 2.37 metres away and hits it three times in a row often enough that a 180 barely raises an eyebrow. Everything else follows from that geometry. There is no defence, no contact and no way to hurry an opponent; there is only your own arm, a fixed target and a running subtraction from 501 that must land exactly on a double. Few sports expose a competitor so completely, and none does it in such a confined space.

The game grew out of English and Welsh pubs, where it was a wager and a way to pass a wet evening long before it was a profession. That inheritance still shapes it: the walk-on music, the fancy dress and the singing crowds at Alexandra Palace are not a marketing overlay but the sport's actual origin, industrialised. What has changed is the standard. A three-dart average of 90 was world class in the mid-1980s; in the 2020s a player who cannot average in the mid-90s will struggle to keep a PDC Tour Card, and the best routinely finish televised matches above 105.