After Phil 'The Power' Taylor's demise alongside James Wade last week in the World Cup, his campaign to win his sixteenth World Championship started off in extremely shaky fashion. Surprisingly, Taylor has been beaten six times in the last six weeks in various different tournaments including the World Cup. His first round opponent in yesterday's World Championship opening day was American Gary Mawson. Mawson had played in a preliminary match a few hours earlier against Filipino Juanito Gionson 4-1. Taylor managed to beat Mawson 3-0 (best of five sets, each set is best of five legs) but only managed to average 88. His finishing was equally as bad as he only managed a 24% checkout success rate, but still only conceded three legs in the entire match. However, that was due to Mawson being in a completely different league. If it was anyone else Taylor wouldn't have been so lucky and with a possible second round match up against John Part on the cards, the world's best darts player needs to step up.The other matches yesterday saw Paul Nicholson and Mark Webster show their decent form to win their games 3-0 respectively. Nicholson saw off Steve Farmer whereas Webster only conceded two legs in beating Steve Maish.
The shock of the night saw former World Champion Steve Beaton lose to World Championship debutant Mark Hylton. Hylton produced some stunning darts with Beaton looking beaten early on. Hylton went 2-1 ahead and missed a dart to win 3-1 before Beaton fought back to take it into the deciding set. It went the distance before the former air steward Hylton won the final leg to win the final set to win the game 3-2.
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