Stephen Bunting was the youngest player in the 2004 field at Lakeside, an 18-year-old from Merseyside who won his first match and then met Ted Hankey. Ten years later he went back as top seed and won the title. Within a fortnight he had a PDC Tour Card.
Fazakerley and St Helens
Bunting was born on 9 April 1985 in Fazakerley, Liverpool, and has long lived in St Helens. He started playing at twelve, in a pub and a social club in Fazakerley. He supports Liverpool and the St Helens rugby league club, and the nickname is “The Bullet”.
The youth titles came early. In 2001 he won the British Teenage Open, the Winmau World Masters youth title and the youth singles at the WDF World Cup. In January 2004 he made his world championship debut, beat Vincent van der Voort and then lost 3–0 to Hankey, a former champion.
Six Years of Early Exits
The next few Lakeside visits were short. John Henderson beat him in the first round in 2005 and Gary Robson in 2009, when he had got in as the standby qualifier. In 2010 he beat Ian White 3–0 before Tony O’Shea beat him 4–0.
2011 was the first run that went deeper. He beat Brian Woods 3–0 with an average of 94.62, then Scott Waites 4–2, and lost the quarter-final 5–1 to Dean Winstanley, the eventual runner-up. He did not qualify in 2012.
Two World Masters
He made up for that in 2012. In October he won the World Masters as number one seed, beating O’Shea 7–4 in the final, and in December he won the Zuiderduin Masters against Alan Norris. He finished the year as BDO and WDF world number one.
The 2013 championship ended in the second round against Darryl Fitton, after Bunting had five darts at double top for a 3–1 lead. Later that year he kept the World Masters without dropping a set, winning the final 7–0 against James Wilson. Only three men had defended it before him: Eric Bristow, Bob Anderson and Martin Adams.
January 2014
He went to the Lakeside Country Club as top seed for the second year running. He beat Jim Widmayer 3–1, Dave Prins 4–0 with an average of 100.65, the highest of the tournament, and Rick Hofstra 5–2 after Hofstra led 2–0. In the semi-final he beat Robbie Green 6–1, and the final against Norris was level at 3–3 before Bunting won 7–4.
On 22 January 2014 he accepted a PDC Tour Card.
The PDC Career
His first PDC season took him to the semi-finals of the World Grand Prix, and at the European Championship he averaged 102.21 in a 10–9 win over Phil Taylor. A year after Lakeside he was in the quarter-finals of the PDC World Championship, losing 5–4 to Raymond van Barneveld with both players averaging 98.30. He has since reached the PDC semi-finals twice, in 2021 and 2025.
The PDC gave him a Premier League wildcard in 2015, and he finished eighth. He was not picked again for the main line-up until 2025, ten years later.
The first PDC major came at the 2024 Masters, where he beat Luke Humphries on the way and Michael van Gerwen 11–7 in the final. In 2025 he won two World Series events and his first two European Tour titles. Along the way he became a crowd favourite, with “Titanium” as his walk-on and the chant “Let’s go Bunting mental”.
