James Wade follows in footsteps of Michael van Gerwen and Adrian Lewis after Players Championship title

James Wade won the 19th Players Championship tournament of the season last Thursday. For "The Machine," it was his first ProTour title in nearly three years.

Wade earned 15,000 pounds with his title after successively defeating Brett Claydon (6-2), Joshua Richardson (6-2), Peter Wright (6-5), Kevin Doets (6-4), Gian van Veen (6-4), Andrew Gilding (7-3) and Scott Williams (8-3).

By now, the left-hander already has quite a record of playing finals on the Pro Tour. It was already his seventeenth year for Wade in which he played at least one Pro Tour final.

Wade reached his very first Pro Tour final in 2006, and in 2007, 2008 and 2009 he managed to take three Pro Tour titles each time. The year 2019 eventually proved to be his most successful, with no fewer than five Pro Tour titles. Between 2006 and 2022, Wade only failed to reach a Pro Tour final in 2013. The same happened to him in 2023 and 2024, before he thus struck again last Thursday.

There are only two other players who managed to reach one or more Pro Tour finals in seventeen different seasons. Besides Wade, these are former world champions Adrian Lewis and Michael van Gerwen. Peter Wright brought the tally to sixteen earlier this year, while Gary Anderson has now reached fifteen. That puts Anderson on par with darts legend Phil Taylor.