MILTON KEYNES, United Kingdom — Canada's John (Darth Maple) Part, a three-time world champion looking to return to the Professional Darts Corp. circuit, has advanced to the final stage of PDC Qualifying School.
The 57-year-old from Oshawa, Ont., who is now a member of Sky Sports' broadcast team in England, posted comeback wins Wednesday over Graham Rackstraw and Darren Barton to book his spot in the final stage.
Part won the 1994 BDO World Darts Championship and the 2003 and 2008 PDC World Championships.
While he hasn't competed on the PDC ProTour circuit since 2020, he has still been playing competitive darts on the Championship Darts Circuit (CDC) in North America and attended qualifying schools in 2021 and 2022.
He has also competed on the World Seniors circuit in recent years.
More than 850 players competed in the 2024 PDC Qualifying Schools in Milton Keynes, England, and Kalkar, Germany, with 31 two-year Tour Cards on offer in the final stage of competition which runs Thursday through Sunday.
There will be 128 players going after the tour cards at the U.K. Q School — 101 who qualified to move on and 27 who automatically qualified.
Those who went straight to the final stage include those who lost their Tour Cards at the end of 2023, along with a series of top performers from the 2023 Challenge and Development Tour Orders of Merit.
The PDC issues 128 Tour Cards each year, including the top 64 players from the PDC Order of Merit following the Paddy Power World Darts Championship. For 2024, the remainder will be made up of players starting the second year of their 2023-2024 Tour Card and those who make it from Q school.
Each of the daily winners in the final stage of the England and Europe competitions will receive an automatic Tour Card. In addition, a further 13 Tour Cards will be awarded to players from the European Q School Order of Merit, while 10 players will come through the U.K. Q School Order of Merit.
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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 10, 2024
The Canadian Press
