In his latest column, PDC Stats Analyst Christopher Kempf analyses the remarkable resurgence of Gary Anderson, as the Scot continues to impress in 2024...
Winning 90% of one's matches on the ProTour is almost impossible - since the European Tour was added to the ProTour calendar in 2012, only two players have done it - Phil Taylor (2012) and Michael van Gerwen (2016).
Those spectacular seasons were made possible in part due to the existence of UK Open Qualifiers (in which top players were more likely to face non-Tour Card Holders) and by the presence of fewer players overall who could regularly average 100+ and challenge those elite players.
Even players with statistics as impressive as Taylor's or Van Gerwen's in their prime are unlikely to reach that 90% threshold today.
In attempting to achieve the impossible, Luke Littler is currently leading the way with an 83% win rate, and World Champion Luke Humphries is on 76%.
Such is the heightened level of competition in the PDC today that no player from 2020 to present has won more than 82% of their matches in a complete season, and even two players with dominant ProTour wins are struggling to approach that over a few months.
But only one other player is currently on track to exceed 82% for the first time in the 2020s - not a teenaged sensation or the reigning World Champion, but Gary Anderson.
Anderson - the current world number 21 - eight years removed from his last World Championship title, who had not even begun his professional darts career by the age at which Humphries claimed the Sid Waddell Trophy.
In only his fourth appearance on the European Tour after a seven-year absence, moreover, Anderson secured the title in Sindelfingen by defeating two World Champions, one of whom did not even hold a Tour Card at the time of Gary Anderson's last pre-hiatus match in 2016.
At the age of 53, the Scottish titan is approaching the form achieved by Phil Taylor at that same age - and if he can sustain it through to the end of his career, he could set a new benchmark for achievement in darts (and sport more generally) at an increasingly advanced age.
Anderson's 32-7 ProTour record encompasses five wins against current members of the Premier League, nine wins at the quarter-final stage or later and four 6-0 whitewashes.
The quality of his defeats are revealing as well - in none of his seven losses has 'The Flying Scotsman' been defeated by a margin of more than two legs.
However, because Anderson, for so long dependent on deep runs in the World Championship and other televised ranking events to bolster his Order of Merit ranking, has not appeared in a televised ranking final for more than three years, he finds himself well outside the all-important top 16.
Even with the increased prize money bestowed upon European Tour champions, Anderson's winnings at the European Grand Prix don't even fall within the 25 largest payouts of his career.
He continues to perform at the same level which won him two Premier Leagues, two World Championship titles and millions in prize money, but now those same victories are vital in his quest to return to the TV stage.
Anderson's often detached opinion of the darts landscape and his place within it - he has hinted numerous times at an impending retirement, and avoided the European Tour for its demanding travel schedule - belies a player who seems to be as committed to his craft as ever.
The Scotsman happens to be the only player thus far in the 2024 season to be averaging 100, and is producing three-treble visits at a rate of nearly one for every two legs.
Anderson is putting to shame traditional 180 superstars like Dave Chisnall and Michael van Gerwen and breaking records for the unexpected power of his scoring.
A reliable indicator of young, brash, erratic talent in darts is the rate at which a player wins a leg in 12 darts or fewer - often the same players who excel at winning a leg by the end of the fourth visit are the same players who struggle to clean up by the end of the sixth.
Yet Anderson, in winning 13.7% of his legs in 12 darts or fewer in 2024, is well ahead of Littler, Humphries, Josh Rock, Gian van Veen - and indeed every other Tour Card Holder in serving up 'aces'.
There is almost no major statistical metric in which Anderson does not figure in the top ten - on such form it will only be a matter of time before his Order of Merit position is restored.
What more is Gary Anderson looking to add to his CV?
Having defeated the best players in their prime at the Alexandra Palace, having won back-to-back World Championships at a time of the most fierce competition at the uppermost echelons of darts, having made an enormously prosperous career in darts for himself from scratch beginning in his 30s - does he have anything more to prove?
Maybe the allure of one last World Championship title keeps him motivated - achieving what Taylor couldn't, going out on top with the darting world at his feet.
It's not an unrealistic aspiration for 'The Flying Scotsman'. If the 2025 World Championship were to begin today, Anderson would arguably be the favourite.
Having aspirations to achieve such greatness at his age, and the stats and victories which put him on the requisite trajectory to get him there, make Anderson the unexpected, unheralded, most outstanding player of 2024 so far.