Snooker star Mark Selby couldn’t resist poking fun at Shaun Murphy’s bold statement about achieving a nine-darter.
Selby, 41, cruised past Ali Carter with a 6-1 victory to secure his spot in the quarter-finals of the Masters. The world number five outclassed Carter, delivering impressive breaks of 62, 108, and 93 as he dismissed the world number 11.
Murphy, who juggles playing with punditry duties during the Masters tournament, lauded Selby’s performance at Alexandra Palace.
READ MORE:Shaun Murphy aims savage jibe at rival – ‘He’ll be checking Google Maps to miss the traffic home’
Yet, rather than simply accepting Murphy’s commendation, Selby took the opportunity to rib ‘the Magician’ for his insistent assertion that he’s among the exclusive few to have hit a 147 in snooker, thrown a nine-darter in darts, and achieved a hole in one in golf.
When the BBC conveyed to Selby that Murphy regards him as being on top form, the ‘Jester from Leicester’ glanced towards the commentary box and quipped: “Yeah, but he talks a lot of rubbish. He reckons he’s had a nine-darter as well.”
Murphy did little to convince anyone that his ambitious nine-darter claim holds water, sticking to his guns on the Onefourseven podcast, where he remarked: “At the end they told me to throw some darts. I haven’t played darts for nearly 15 years,” reports the Express.
“Let me just point this out there, to be clear, I never claimed to be a really good darts player, ever. I used to play socially, once or twice a week in my old pub in Manchester when I lived up there a long time ago. I never claimed to be any good at it. But randomly one night, using a set of Phil Taylor darts which he’d sent to me as a gift, I threw nine perfect darts. I think I followed it with 26, it was ridiculous.”
Unfortunately for Murphy, his demonstration of dart skills in front of Michael van Gerwen and Luke Humphries didn’t go as hoped, as he hit a four with his first dart before missing the board entirely with the next two.
Sports enthusiasts are more than just sceptical about Murphy’s nine-dart tale. Instead of retracting his statement, Murphy maintained that he only missed during the Paddy Power challenge due to the pressure of an audience.
He added: “So at the end of the challenge today, there’s a lot of barracking, a lot of banter, there’s TV crews, behind the cameras there’s 50 people stood there watching. I’m totally out of my comfort zone, I’ve got a scorer who wants to watch me fail, I’ve got Mark Williams wanting to see me fail.
“Van Gerwen, one the best of all time, the current world champion Luke Humphries has given me his darts. I’ve thrown the first one, held onto it for a bit long and hit two, thrown the next one, gone for double something and missed that, then on purpose I’ve thrown it into the cardboard backing.
“It was totally on purpose, I thought it was funny. The marker nearly collapsed, because it finished about a foot from his head. I thought that was an obvious joke, but it wasn’t.”