Robert Hughes arrived at Lakeside late, stayed for two matches, and led the number one seed on the way out.
That was January 2009. By then the man from Milford Haven had spent more than a decade on the BDO circuit, won a national title, lost a BDO Gold Cup final and helped Wales win a Nations Cup. The world championship was the one stage of the circuit he had not yet played, and he got there at 42.
Cardiff-Born, Pembrokeshire-Based
Hughes was born in Cardiff on 12 December 1966 and made his darts life at the other end of South Wales, in Milford Haven. He played in the Milford Haven Darts League and Superleague and represented Pembrokeshire at county level, and he had been throwing since the late 1980s.
The nickname came from his favourite singer. Hughes played as “Elvis” and walked on to “Burning Love”. It was one of the more straightforward stage names on the circuit: he liked Elvis Presley, so that was the name.
The Welsh Circuit Years
His name started to appear in the later stages of open events in the late 1990s. He reached the quarter-finals of the Welsh Open in 1997 and of the British Open in 2000. The first run that stood out came at the 2004 Welsh Open, where he beat Lee Palfreyman, Steve Smith and John Walton, the 2001 world champion, before Tony West stopped him in the semi-final.
A year later he was a national champion. Hughes won the Wales National Championship in 2005, and the man he beat in the final was Mark Webster, who would lift the world title at Lakeside three years later and whose name sits in the 2008 row of the list of BDO world champions.
2006: A Gold Cup Final and a Win Over Hankey
The following season was his busiest at the top level. Hughes reached the final of the 2006 BDO Gold Cup and lost it to Gary Anderson, the Scot who went on to win two PDC world titles. He made the quarter-finals of the WDF Europe Cup that year, losing to Sweden’s Göran Klemme, and at the Winmau World Masters he beat Ted Hankey, the 2000 world champion, before going out to Brian Woods in the last 16.
International selection followed the form. Hughes was part of the Wales team that finished third at the 2007 WDF World Cup in the Netherlands, and a member of the Welsh side that won the Nations Cup in 2008. He was also runner-up at the French Open.
Individually, 2007 was a thin year: a quarter-final at the Northern Ireland Open and early exits at the International Darts League, the World Masters and the qualifiers for the world championship. 2008 was the opposite. He reached the final of the Isle of Man Open, losing to Dave Chisnall, and the semi-finals of the Welsh Open, where he beat Scott Waites, Dave Prins and Alan Walker before Webster beat him. He was also runner-up in the Wales National Championship that year, losing the final to Robbie Green.
Lakeside, January 2009
Hughes qualified for the 2009 championship at the Lakeside Country Club as an unseeded player. The draw gave him Eddy Sims, the sixteenth seed, in the first round, and Hughes won 3–2 in sets.
The second round brought the number one seed. Gary Anderson had beaten Hughes in the Gold Cup final three years earlier, and at Frimley Green the Welshman went 2–1 up in sets before Anderson won the next three to go through 4–2. It remained the only time Hughes played at the championship. The title that year went to Hankey, the player Hughes had beaten at the World Masters in 2006.
After the BDO
Hughes stayed with the BDO until 2016 and then played on the PDC side in 2017 and 2018. His best results at the two biggest BDO events did not change after that January: the last 16 at Lakeside in 2009 and the last 16 at the World Masters in 2006.
The record reads as a Welsh national title in 2005, a Gold Cup final in 2006, a Nations Cup with Wales in 2008, and one world championship in which he beat a seed and took a set lead against the man at the top of the draw.
