Wayne Mardle
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wayne Mardle (born in Dagenham, England on May 10, 1973) is a darts player for the Professional Darts Corporation, and former player in the BDO. He now lives in Romford. Before turning professional, he worked for The Association of Accounting Technicians
Wayne started playing darts at the age of 11, when he practised with his dad. His first 180 came two weeks after he started playing. He soon became better than his dad, and his first competition win was in a pub called the 'Double Top' on his 13th birthday in 1986.
He has been known as "Hawaii 501" since 2000, due to the Hawaiian shirts he started wearing in 1998, and 501 being the start score of a leg of darts. The name is also a play on the title of the popular TV show, Hawaii 5-0. This dress sense coupled with his crowd-pleasing onstage activity (such as dancing to the interval music) has seen him become a favourite with the fans.
Whilst he has reached 5th in the World Rankings and performed consistently well in the World Championship (reaching the semi-final in 2004, 2005 and 2006), he has not yet won a major tournament as a member of the PDC, although in both 2004 and 2005 he reached the final of the Las Vegas Desert Classic, losing on both occasions to Phil Taylor. However, he has always seem to suffer from what Sid Waddell calls the "Mardle Drift", which sees his Darts continually land in 5 and Treble 5 instead of the 20/Treble 20.
He married his wife Donna on July 2, 2002, who also plays darts, but not at a competitive level.
In 2006, Mardle had a book published (co-authored with Ian Spragg) entitled "Hawaii 501 - Life As A Darts Pro". It chronicles the ups and downs of his life as a professional darts player during 2005.
If Wayne wasn't in darts, he says his profession of choice would be a Television presenter, claiming, "I can talk crap like them all".
World Championship 2006 Mardle was knocked out of the Championship in the first round by Alan Caves on the 21/12/2006. The score was 3-2.
