Steve Douglas played four world championships at Lakeside across thirteen years, and three of them ended in the second round. The first, in 2000, ended against the man who went on to win the title.
A Product of the Youth System
Douglas was born on 17 November 1977 and lived in Gillingham, Kent. He was left-handed, played as “The Game” and walked on to the Motörhead song of the same name.
He came through the BDO’s youth structure. In 1995 he was in the first England youth side and won the boys’ singles at the WDF Europe Youth Cup, at 17. His first senior England cap came in 1999, in the internationals played at Lakeside, and at county level he made more than a hundred appearances across Kent and London.
Frimley Green, 2000
His world championship debut came in January 2000 after the qualifiers. He beat Gary Spedding in the first round and then met Ted Hankey, who beat him 3–0 and went on to win the title.
It took him eleven years to get back. In the meantime he won smaller opens, the Dover Open among them in 2009, and in 2010 he was part of the England team that won the BDO British Internationals and reached the semi-finals of the Dutch Open.
2011 to 2013: Robson Twice, Then O’Shea
The draw for 2011 gave him Gary Robson, and Robson won 3–0. A year later the draw put them together again in the first round, and this time Douglas won 3–0 before Paul Jennings beat him 4–2.
His 2011 season on the circuit had been one of his best. He was runner-up at the Latvia Open, a semi-finalist at the Mariflex Open and the Luxembourg Open, and a quarter-finalist at the Scottish Open and the BDO British Open. He also won the Essex Open.
The 2013 championship came weeks after a scare. On 13 December 2012 Douglas had a heart attack and needed a stent fitted after a blood clot was found in a coronary artery. He was at Frimley Green in January all the same, won his first-round match and lost in the second round to Tony O’Shea, 4–1.
Off the oche he was one of the people behind the BDO’s players’ forum, which he co-owned and ran as administrator.
The PDC Years
Douglas went to PDC Q School in January 2014. He played three of the four days and did not win a Tour Card, but the entry gave him PDPA membership and a route into some events. In May, at the tenth Players Championship of the year, he beat Adrian Lewis, a two-time world champion, on the way to his first PDC last 16, where Tony Newell beat him 6–1.
On the Challenge Tour he reached two finals that year, losing 5–1 to Mark Frost and 5–4 to Matt Clark after leading 4–2, and finished eighth on the Order of Merit.
In 2015 he went back to Q School and won a two-year card on day three, beating Jermaine Wattimena 5–4. At that year’s UK Open he beat Mark Robinson, John Bowles and Andy Boulton before John Henderson stopped him 9–7 in the third round. He played on the PDC side until 2017.
His best world championship runs were the second rounds of 2000, 2012 and 2013. The first ended against the man who won the title that year, the last against the man who reached the final.
