Darts Career
Osborne has won two PDC Pro Tour events and he also managed to hit two perfect nine dart finishes in 2005. The first one of these came in the Players Championship in the Isle of Wight and a second one followed at the non-televised qualifying rounds for the 2005 World Matchplay.
On his World Championship debut in 2007, Osborne reached the quarter-finals where he was beaten 5-4 by Andy Jenkins.
This great performance was followed by an even better one at the 2007 UK Open, where he beat Michael van Gerwen and Mervyn King as he reached the semi-final only to be beaten 11-10 in a thriller against Vincent van der Voort. He followed this success with victory against James Wade in Las Vegas, only to lose to Peter Manley in the second round.
Osborne suffered a surprising first round exit in the 2008 World Championship, losing 3-1 to Dutchman Erwin Extercatte. In the 2008 World Matchplay, he beat King in the first round, but then lost in the next round to Phil Taylor. Osborne was 10-0 down before finally winning a leg, eventually losing 13-5 with Taylor averaging 109.
In the 2009 PDC World Championship, Osborne beat South Africa's Charles Losper 3-0 in the first round, before losing 4-1 to van der Voort in the second round.
2009 was a breakthrough year for Osborne, as he reached his first major final in the 2009 UK Open. Having beaten Raymond van Barneveld, Jamie Caven and Kevin Painter in the earlier rounds, he lost 11-6 to Taylor in the final. He also won the 2009 Championship League, defeating Taylor 6-4 in the final, but a disappointing year in the other majors was compounded with a first-round loss to Simon Whitlock in the 2010 World Championship.
In 2010, Osborne reached the semi-finals of the Players Championship Finals before losing to King. At the Grand Slam of Darts, Osborne lost his opening group match to Robert Thornton before beating Whitlock and Dave Chisnall to qualify for the knockout stages. He lost 10-3 to Gary Anderson in the last 16. He then reached the third round of the 2011 World Championship, and was 3-2 up against van Barneveld before losing 4-3.
Between 2005 and 2010, Osborne used the nickname The Wizard. He is also known in the circuit, most notably by commentator Sid Waddell as Ozzy, in reference to The Wizard of Oz and to rock singer Ozzy Osbourne. Due to the latter, he used the song Paranoid by Ozzy's band Black Sabbath as his walk-on. In 2011, he officially changed his nickname to 'Ozzy', following the emergence of Simon Whitlock, who is also nicknamed 'The Wizard'.
Read more about this topic: Colin Osborne
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