Cameron Menzies clinched his maiden PDC ranking title with victory in Wednesday’s Players Championship 29, sealed with an 8-4 success against Stephen Bunting in Leicester.
Menzies has been one of the sport’s stand-out performers throughout the last six months, and he underlined his progress by capturing the £15,000 top prize at the Mattioli Arena.
The enigmatic Scot defeated six televised title winners on his way to glory in the East Midlands, which lifts him into the top ten on the Players Championship Order of Merit.
“I’ve won a ProTour, and nobody can ever take that away from me,” reflected an emotional Menzies, a runner-up at Players Championship 19 in August.
“I wanted to win this title so much; I’m absolutely buzzing. This means so much to me.
“At one stage I never thought I was good enough to win a ProTour, but I believe right now I’m playing the best darts of my life.
“I’m playing against the best players in the world here, and I feel when I’m on my game, I can match them, and I never thought I’d be able to do that.
“Hopefully this is a stepping stone to winning a major [title], like Ritchie [Edhouse] and Mike De Decker have done recently.
Menzies produced his performance of the day in his third round victory against Rob Cross, averaging 107 on his way to a 6-3 success over the 2018 World Champion.
Having seen off Jose de Sousa and Jacques Labre earlier in the day, Menzies then won through a last-leg decider against Krzysztof Ratajski in the last 16, recovering from 5-3 down to triumph.
The 35-year-old backed this up with a comprehensive 6-2 victory over James Wade in the quarter-finals, before demolishing Danny Noppert 7-1 to maintain his charge.
Menzies then made a strong start to Wednesday’s showpiece, converting back-to-back 78 and 86 checkouts to establish a two-leg buffer, only for Bunting to respond with a blistering burst of his own.
The Masters champion missed double 12 for a nine-darter in leg five, but legs of 11 and 12 darts saw him level at three apiece, before Menzies replied with another three-leg blitz to lead 6-3.
Bunting reduced the arrears with a clinical 120 kill in leg ten, although he was unable to launch a late fightback, with Menzies keeping his cool to cap off a landmark day in his darting career.
Bunting, meanwhile, was remarkably featuring in his sixth Players Championship final of 2024, but his wait for an elusive first ProTour title of 2024 continues.
The 39-year-old averaged 104 in his opening round victory against Danny Lauby, which he followed with impressive wins over Darryl Pilgrim and Connor Scutt respectively.
The St Helens star also dispatched World Grand Prix champion Mike De Decker 6-1 in the last 16, and after edging out Damon Heta in the last eight, he swept aside Chris Landman 7-2 in the semi-finals.
Landman moved into the provisional World Championship qualification places with his run to the last four, which included a nine-dart finish in his fourth round success against Ross Smith.
The Dutchman also accounted for Florian Hempel and Mensur Suljovic in reaching the semi-finals, where he was joined by his compatriot Danny Noppert – also a semi-finalist at the European Championship last weekend.
Noppert won through a deciding-leg thriller against Michael Smith in the last eight, as the world number two made up the quarter-final line-up alongside Wade, Heta and Suljovic.
Elsewhere, Callan Rydz and Ricardo Pietreczko joined Landman in landing nine-darters on an action-packed day in Leicester, achieving perfection in wins over Keane Barry and Radek Szaganski respectively.
The 2024 PDC ProTour season will conclude with Players Championship 30 on Thursday, as the race to qualify for next month’s Ladbrokes Players Championship Finals reaches its climax.
The PDC's Twitter feed will be updated throughout the day with details of which matches are coming up on each of the four streaming boards, with play getting underway from 1300 GMT.