“It was a good game and good fun, but
I’m glad to get it out of the way,”
said Waites. “It’s difficult to get up
on stage and play Ted, but I enjoyed
the game and I think the crowd did
too.”
“I wanted to try and get into a bit of
a lead and I managed to do that. The
146 was nice and my finishing has been
pretty good this week.”
Photo: PDC/Lawrence Lustig
“Sometimes you get drawn into
what Ted’s doing rather than
concentrating on your game, and
I did tonight, but I also had a bit
of a laugh with him as well and it
worked for me.”
Robert Thornton overcame a slow starting
Tony O’Shea to set up a semi-final clash with
Waites. The Scotsman punished early misses from his
opponent to race into a 3-0 lead, before a brace of 180s
helped O’Shea to get himself into the match as the scoreline
moved on to 8-4 in favour of Thornton.
From there on in it was one-way traffic as former UK Open Champion
Thornton took eight of the last ten legs to secure a comfortable 16-6
victory.
“It’s a very big win for me and I’m really happy with that,” said Thornton.
“Tony’s been very consistent over the last week, but I wanted to keep
my scoring up and hopefully get more chances than him.”
“My scoring put pressure on his doubles, and I managed to take my
chances. To win by a scoreline like that against Tony is great because
he keeps coming back at you.”
“I was a little bit patchy at times but I’ve been pretty consistent this
week and you need to do that in an event like this. It would rank very
highly for me if I can go on and win this now.”
Photo: PDC/Lawrence Lustig
Phil Taylor has become used to putting up big victories over James
Wade in televised tournaments recently, and this years Grand Slam
looked to be no different as the sixteen-time World Champion raced
into a 9-2 lead.
It had been a different Wade than of recent times all week however
and the seven-time major winner fought back hard, at one point closing
the gap to 12-10 in favour of Taylor.
It was not to be for Wade though, Taylor making all of his experience
count as he reeled off the last four legs without reply to secure a 1610 victory.
“It was a great comeback from James and he had me worried,”
admitted Taylor. ”It was a really hard game and I wasn’t at my best,
but sometimes you have to win ugly.”
“It was a great
comeback from
James and he had
me worried”
Phil Taylor