The Darts World 50

FROM our earliest days, Darts World looked to wider horizons than the UK men’s game. Here we noted the announcement of the inaugural Dutch Open for female players. The Dutch Open has been one of the longest-running, and successful, events in the darting world.

Huge fields, superb organisation, and a large number of big-name winners have ensured it has stayed front and centre throughout its illustrious history. It also marks the unofficial start of new WDF/BDO seasons.

Although the Dutch were not the first of the big competitions to hold a Women’s event, it was certainly in the vanguard. By this point in the 1980s, there was a Women’s World Masters and a WDF European Cup for Women’s teams.

As we have seen in the Women’s game was developing throughout the 70s and 80s but not always in a positive way. The Dutch Open’s debut was an important staging post toward what could be described as a tour for women players.

Very few publications can lay claim to being “The Official Voice” of their sport. But then not many are almost 50 years old and have coexisted side by side with the object of their affection throughout the swings and roundabouts of two golden eras and at least one near collapse.

In the early 1970s, a handful of ingredients were coming together to form the recipe for the massive success of the hitherto lesser-known pub game. Darts World Magazine was one of those ingredients.

Editor, proprietor, and instigator, Tony Wood, welcomed readers to the new Darts World magazine for our November/December 1972 debut (Issue 1). The ingredients mentioned above could all be seen within those first 36 pages and then in every issue that followed.

DW has chronicled the ups and downs, the major events, and the minutiae while championing the game at every opportunity.

The Darts World 50 offers 50 highlights selected direct from our pages during what must now be thought of as the ‘Golden Age/s of Darts’.