Dubai Duty Free Darts player guide: Phil Taylor

Nickname The Power

Date of birth August 13 1960

Home town Stoke-on-Trent, England

Darts Used 26g Target

PDC Order of Merit 2nd (at February 23 2015)

Twitter @PhilTaylor

Quite simply the greatest player ever to throw a dart, Phil has been crowned as World Champion an unrivalled 16 times during an amazing 25-year career at the sport’s highest level.

The winner in his debut World Championship back in 1990, Taylor added another victory in 1992 and bounced back from losing out to Dennis Priestley in the PDC’s first World Championship final two years later by winning the next eight titles in an incredible 44-game unbeaten run.

Taylor was also unbeaten for the first three years of the Premier League Darts event after its introduction in 2005, topping the league table for eight successive seasons and has been crowned as champion on six occasions.

He also created history in the 2010 Premier League final by becoming the first - and so far only - player ever to land two nine-dart finishes in the same game as he wrestled back the title from James Wade.

The Stoke legend has also picked up 15 World Matchplay titles, surpassing his five successive titles from 2000-2004 by winning the last seven Winter Gardens events since 2008 in an amazing 35-game unbeaten run.

An 11-time World Grand Prix winner, Taylor's six Premier League titles were matched by his sixth Grand Slam of Darts win last November, and he is a five-time UK Open and Las Vegas Desert Classic winner and four-time European Champion.

He has also enjoyed World Series of Darts success with back-to-back victories in the Sydney Darts Masters and a 2014 win at the Perth Darts Masters, adding further titles to his unmatched roll of honour.

His unrivalled tally of titles, though, fails to tell the full story of the player who has led the rise in standards of darts in the past two decades and led the sport's professional growth worldwide.

Taylor holds the ten highest individual televised averages, including the world record 118.66 he achieved against Kevin Painter in the 2010 UK Open, and has hit ten nine-dart finishes on the big stage.