Nobody had done it since Bristow.
Three world titles in a row. Eric Bristow managed the feat in the mid-1980s, at the height of his powers, and for three decades the hat-trick sat there unmatched — until a Middlesbrough thrower in his late forties reeled off 2017, 2018 and 2019 as though the hardest thing in BDO darts were a matter of administration. Glen Durrant remains the only player since Bristow to win the championship three years running. Then he did something Bristow never had to do: he started again from zero, in the other code, and won there too.
Middlesbrough, the Long Way Round
Durrant was born in Middlesbrough on 24 November 1970. The nickname, Duzza, is Teesside economy at its finest — take the surname, sand the ends off, done. And unlike the prodigies who arrive fully formed at nineteen, his rise was geological. He worked his way up through the BDO ranks over years, and the major titles only began arriving in his mid-forties: the World Masters in 2015, defended in 2016, alongside Finder Darts Masters wins in those same two years.
So when he finally won the world title in January 2017, Durrant was forty-six — an age the modern game files under retirement planning. He treated it as a beginning.
Three Januaries
The first final was straightforward enough: 7–3 over Danny Noppert in 2017. The second was anything but. In 2018, Mark McGeeney dragged him all the way to a deciding set before Durrant edged it 7–6 — the kind of final that leaves the Lakeside crowd wrung out and hoarse. The third, a 7–3 win over Scott Waites in 2019, completed the run and put his name in a sentence with Bristow’s, which in that building is the highest sentence there is.
Around the world titles he added the World Trophy in 2018 and a third Finder Masters the same year. For three seasons he was, without much argument, the best player the BDO had.
The Question He Kept Being Asked
Which is exactly where the sneer came in. By the late 2010s the BDO’s fields were thin — the deepest talent had drained towards the PDC long before, and every Lakeside champion of the era carried an invisible asterisk in the eyes of the other code’s supporters. Three titles? Very nice. Against whom?
Most champions let the question hang. Durrant answered it. In 2019 he went to Q-School — the PDC’s brutally democratic entry exam, where decorated champions queue up alongside pub qualifiers — and came away with a tour card. A three-time world champion, closer to fifty than forty, starting from the bottom rung of somebody else’s ladder.
Premier League, on Debut
His first PDC season would have counted as a triumph for anybody: two Players Championship titles, a semi-final at the World Matchplay, another at the World Grand Prix. It earned him a Premier League place for 2020 — and he won that too, on debut, beating Nathan Aspinall in the final of the most exposed, least forgiving event the sport stages.
Consider what that run does to the asterisk. The Premier League is where the PDC parades its elite, week after week, and newcomers are supposed to be grateful just to survive it. Durrant walked in from the BDO and beat the lot of them at the first attempt, adding another Matchplay semi-final and a World Championship quarter-final in 2020 for good measure. The question about the quality of his Lakeside titles was never asked with a straight face again.
The Fade, and What Stands
Then the darts left him. The decline, when it came, was steep and hard to watch — form draining away with a swiftness that felt cruel after so late and so complete a peak — and in 2022 he retired from the professional game, his tour card years behind him. He moved to the microphone instead, commentating for Sky Sports and the MODUS Super Series, where the analysis is as measured as the throw used to be.
The ledger, though, is closed, and it is remarkable. Set him beside the other giants of the late era — Martin Adams, who also won three titles and stayed loyal to the end — and Durrant’s path stands alone in the championship’s history: the only man who conquered Lakeside three straight times and then went and settled the argument in the other code’s own house. Duzza, from Middlesbrough, the long way round. Twice.
