Michael Smith has been told to follow the examples of golf stars Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy if he wants to fight his way back up the PDC Order of Merit. The 2022/23 world champion’s miserable year was completed on Monday when he was left out of the Premier League Darts line-up, having been axed alongside Peter Wright.
Stephen Bunting and Chris Dobey are the two men to replace them, but the omission of ‘Bully Boy’ hasn’t come as a huge shock.
He’s had just two event wins in 2024, a Players Championship tournament in Germany and in the World Cup of Darts alongside Luke Humphries, with the pair representing England.
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And following his second-round exit to Kevin Doets at Ally Pally this month, Smith has now dropped to 16th in the world. But the 34-year-old has been urged by Paul Nicholson to forget his Premier League snub, and concentrate instead on tournaments that are worth PDC ranking points.
“If you're world champion, you can go to the World Series, you can go to the Premier League and you can go to World Series finals and win a whole lot of money,” the Australian told talkSPORT. "But if it's not in your ranking, you're going to find yourself in a position where you're not in the Matchplay.
“Think about Johnny Clayton. When he won the Masters, the Premier League, World Series finals, none of those were ranked. It was the same for Luke Littler. Won the Premier League, won the World Series finals. That's what, £350,000 in non-ranking money? He had to win the Grand Slam to get in the top four.”
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The former major winner told Smith to be “crafty” with his schedule, and believes time away from the Premier League can help him establish himself among the world’s best. "This is how golfers prepare their seasons,” he continued.
“When does Rory McIlroy ever play more than three weeks in a row? If he has to, that's it. End of story. When does Tiger start his season? At the Farmers Insurance Open. Why? Because he wants to make sure he's prepped for the season and he will cherry-pick everything.
"This is what dart players are going to have to do now. This has come at the right time for Michael because of 34 Players' Championships in 2025, 14 European Tours, no guarantee of Matchplay, get the schedule right, get the work ethic right and I have every faith that the top-10 will be his again."
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Smith was ranked world No.1 during 2023, but has struggled to replicate the form that brought him his sole world title earlier that year. But he still managed a fourth-placed finish in the last Premier League campaign, enough to qualify for finals night.
There, he was beaten 10-5 by eventual champion Littler in his semi-final. This year will signify only the second time in eight seasons that the St Helens man has failed to make the line-up, having last missed out in 2021.
