2009 UK Open

The 2009 Blue Square UK Open was the seventh year of the PDC darts tournament where, following numerous regional qualifying heats throughout Britain, players competed in a single elimination tournament to be crowned champion. The tournament was held at the Reebok Stadium in Bolton between 4 and 7 June 2009 and has the nickname, the "FA Cup of darts" as a random draw is staged after each round until the final.

2009 UK Open Regional Finals

There were eight regional final events staged between January and May 2009 to determine the UK Open Order of Merit Table. The tournament winners were:

Format and qualifiers

The tournament features 129 players. As in previous years, eight regional UK Open events were staged across the UK where players winning are collated into the UK Open Order Of Merit. The top 96 players and ties in the list, who played a minimum of three events received a place at the final stages.

Phil Taylor

Mark Walsh

Colin Lloyd

Jamie Caven

Robert Thornton

James Wade

Dennis Priestley

2012 UK Open

The 2012 Speedy Services UK Open was a Darts tournament staged in the UK by the Professional Darts Corporation. It was the tenth year of the tournament where, following numerous regional qualifying heats throughout Britain, players competed in a single elimination tournament to be crowned champion. The tournament was held at the Reebok Stadium in Bolton over 7–10 June 2012, and has the nickname, the "FA Cup of darts" as a random draw is staged after each round until the final. Robert Thornton won the tournament beating Phil Taylor 11–5 in the final to win his first PDC major.

Format and qualifiers

2012 UK Open Qualifiers

There were eight qualifying events staged across England between February and May 2012 to determine the UK Open Order of Merit Table. The tournament winners were:

The tournament featured 178 players. The results of the eight qualifiers shown above were collated into the UK Open Order Of Merit. The top 32 players and ties in the Order of Merit, who played a minimum of two events, received a place at the final tournament. In addition, the next 82 players in the Order of Merit list qualified for the tournament, but needed to start in the earlier rounds played on the Thursday. A further 64 players qualified via regional qualifying tournaments.

Open (Blues Image album)

Open is Blues Image's second album and most acclaimed album, which featured the No. 4 hit single, "Ride Captain Ride".

Critical reception

Robert Christgau, writing in The Village Voice, wrote in a contemporary review: "Great single, mediocre (though improved) album. Do we really need another 'Parchman Farm?'"

Track listing

All songs by Blues Image except where noted.

Personnel

References

Open (Gotthard album)

Open is the fourth studio album released by the hard rock band Gotthard.

The album peaked at #1 on the Swiss Charts and was certified as 2x Platinum for exceeding 60,000 sales.

Track listing

All songs written by Steve Lee/Leo Leoni/Chris von Rohr except where noted.

Asian version (BMG AVCB-66072) adds the following

Personnel

Guests:

Open (sport)

An Open in sports terminology refers to a sporting event or game tournament that is open to contestants regardless of their professional or amateur status, age, ability, gender, sex, or other categorization. In many sports, preliminary qualifying events, open to all entrants, are held to successively reduce the field to a manageable number for participation in a final championship event, which itself may involve elimination rounds.

The term 'Open' may not be absolute. For example, in the U.S. Open in golf, entrants at qualifying events must have a USGA official handicap of 1.4 or less. Other minimum performance standards or eligibility criteria may apply in other sports.

Opens are usually found in golf, tennis, badminton, quizbowl, fighting games, snooker, darts, volleyball, ultimate, squash and chess.