The PDC World Championship: My Men of the Tournament.

The Ladbrokes World Darts Championship reached its conclusion on Monday night, and will be remembered for being probably the best tournament ever staged in the 19-year history of the event. There of course could only be one winner, that man being Adrian Lewis, who etched his name further into the game's history books, but there were many more players for which the tournament was a success.

Andy Hamilton’s run to the final was helped in no small part by his belief, will to win, and simply the fact that he is one of the most difficult players on the circuit to finish off. Antonio Alcinas could have had him in the first round, Vincent van der Voort could have put him out in the second, and Simon Whitlock probably should have won their semi-final, but Hamilton is one of the most tenacious guys out there, and only he decides when the game is over. In all honesty, the final was a game too far, but £100,000, a rise to 7^th in the Order of Merit, and a place in the Premier League is a decent consolation for a player who nearly didn’t qualify for the Matchplay last summer. Then he looked like a player whose best days were behind him, but how wrong some of us were.

John Part proved once again that class is permanent with a run to the quarter-finals that had the fans reminiscing of times gone by when he really was the man to beat. Part is a master of the set format, and the match against James Wade went a long way to proving it. Few players down the years have won as many match-defining legs as the Canadian has – his 2008 title win was built around how many sets he won on 5^th legs – and it only took a sudden death leg to defeat him. He is back up to 24^th in the Order of Merit, but most importantly we learned that he has his hunger back for the big matches that are hopefully still to come in his career, that’s if he ever lost it, of course.

Simon Whitlock’s broken left ankle kept him out of the Grand Slam and the Players Championship finals, and there were doubts over whether he would be in any fit state to compete at the Worlds. So much so, that bookmakers suspended betting on his first round tie with Dennis Smith, for fear of either an upset or a withdrawal. They needn’t have worried. A near flawless showing with a 105 average meant that the beard really had to be feared. Few expected him to beat Gary Anderson in the quarter-finals, least of all in the devastating fashion in which he did, but he proved that he was just as dangerous is two years before, where he reached the final. Only a spirited Hamilton revival denied him a second crack at the title, but I think he would have taken a last-four place three weeks ago.

Before the World Championship, few had really heard much about Kim Huybrechts. Fair enough, he has had a couple of decent results before - he had reached a European Championship quarter-final - but he was hardly a household name. We all took notice however after he put out Grand Prix finalist Brendan Dolan in the first round. To be fair, Dolan didn't turn up, but Huybrechts put in a mature performance on his Alexandra Palace debut. The London crowd had a new name to look out for and cheer for, and that was before they were introduced to his girlfriend Dana! She unwittingly played more of a part in her man's victory over Paul Nicholson in the third round, after The Asset blamed Sky for giving her too much airtime, which led to a surge in crowd activity on his key throws. In all honesty, that took away from another brilliant win from the Belgian, who in a couple of years could be one of the really big players in the PDC.

The last word has to go to the champion though. Adrian Lewis retained the title, becoming only the third man in the sport’s history, after Eric Bristow and Raymond van Barneveld to successfully defend his first World Championship. There were a number of occasions on which he looked vulnerable, not least in the first round, when two sets behind Nigel Heydon, but champions manage to find an extra gear, and he managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. He looked in real trouble against James Wade in the semi-final, and very few players would have been capable of winning five successive sets – which included all of the final ten legs of the match – to win a sensational encounter 6-5. His missed double 12 for the 9-darter in the final was probably the only thing missing from a job very well done.

The line-up for the 2012 Premier League has been announced as I write. The top 4 in the Order of Merit - Phil Taylor, Adrian Lewis, James Wade, Gary Anderson - are joined by wild card selections Raymond van Barneveld, Simon Whitlock, Andy Hamilton and Kevin Painter. After that, the real tournament action begins, where the Hamiltons and Huybrechts of this world will look to build on the very firm foundations they now have following a brilliant World Championship.