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Arron Monk claimed a brilliant double at the weekend, with victories in the PDC Unicorn Youth Tour Event’s one and three at the Moorways centre in Derby.

Photo: Lawerence Lustig/PDC

The 2011 Under-21 World Champion whitewashed both James Hubbard and Michael Smith, who won the second event, in final triumphs on consecutive days.

Monk, who plays Raymond van Barneveld in the inaugural European Tour Event in Austria next weekend, collected over £1000 in prize money for his excellent efforts.

He said: “It’s absolutely brilliant, I’m over the moon. This will be my last year on the Youth Tour and I want to make it count. My aim is to win 14 of the 21 events so this is a great start.”

“Last year was frustrating for me. I had a bad patch and was changing my darts and trying to improve my game, and it just didn’t happen for me on the Youth Tour.

“I’ve been practising for a while now with a different throw, where my darts flick up more in the board instead of laying flat, but I’ve never had the guts to try it in tournaments before this weekend.

“Chris Aubrey persuaded me to try in Derby because we’ve been practising together ahead of this and I’ve been hitting 180s and 140s for fun, so it’s a massive boost for my confidence that it’s worked so well.”

Monk’s route to glory in Saturday’s Event one included victories over Aubrey and Smith before overcoming Hubbard 4-0 in the final with a commanding performance, in which he produced a stunning 150 checkout.

After reaching the last 16 in Event two, Monk returned on Sunday to win Event three, beating Co Stompe Jnr and Jamie Lewis amongst others, before another 4-0 victory in the final.

By Chris Murphy