28/05/2022

Forgotten Darters - Colin Monk who stunned with 1996 Winmau World Masters win

In this series of articles, DartsNews takes a look at Forgotten Darters of the past with the latest one seeing the focus on Colin Monk.

Monk who won the only major of his career in the Winmau World Masters back in 1996 and whose son is currently trying to follow in his footsteps.

The general public saw Colin Monk at work for the first time at the BDO World Championship in 1994.

FORGOTTEN DARTERS - Albertino Essers: 'The Sensation' who suffered with dartitis

At the legendary Lakeside, he beat the Dane Jann Hoffmann in the first round with a 3-0 win. In the second round he lost 3-1 against Steve McCollum.

'Mad Monk', as his nickname was, went off the international circuit in the following years but won his first major title in 1995 with the Denmark Open. Partly because of this, he qualified again for the BDO World Championship and this time he reached the quarter-finals, where Raymond van Barneveld eventually turned out to be too strong.

However, Monk became more and more a player to be reckoned with and in 1996 he won the Winmau World Masters. In a very exciting final, he defeated reigning BDO world champion Richie Burnett 3-2.

In the years that followed, Monk was also a fixture at the BDO World Championship. In 1998 and 2002 he reached the semi-finals.

Legendary are the images where he, with a crying son in Arron in the hall, went down against Raymond van Barneveld and Mervyn King respectively.

The Englishman made his last appearance at the BDO World Championship in 2004 where he was defeated in the first round against Ted Hankey. Afterwards, he switched to the PDC, where he had already reached the quarter-finals at the UK Open the year before.

However, Monk had a particularly difficult time pushing through and never made it past the first round in four World Championship appearances. He would never come close to that quarter-final at the UK Open in other majors either.

Forgotten Darters: The brief but successful career of Ritchie Davies

Monk slipped further down the Order of Merit and had to win through Q-School in 2012 to claim a new Tour Card. He failed in this and since then made no further attempt. Since 2013 it has been since we saw the 53-year-old Englishman in action at an official tournament.

So it ended up with one major for Monk. He now mainly focuses on guiding his son Arron, who is also active in the PDC, although he also has a hard time meeting the high expectations. In 2011 he did win the Colin Monk Classic.