Ryan Searle

Ryan Searle, known as Heavy Metal, is an English darts player who has held a PDC Tour Card in every season since 2019. Born in Tiverton on 21 October 1987 and based in Westleigh, he was 15th on the PDC Order of Merit when the rankings were last published on 2 November 2026, with £562,750 in ranking prize money over the two-year period the list covers. The PDC credits him with eight senior titles, all of them won on the ProTour, and he took up the game in 2008.

Searle won his first PDC ranking title at Players Championship 3 in 2020, beating Michael van Gerwen 8-6 in the final. In 2021 he reached his first major final at the Players Championship Finals, beating Daryl Gurney 10-9 and Brendan Dolan 11-6 before losing 11-10 to Peter Wright. He has also reached two European Tour finals, losing 8-7 to Martin Schindler at the 2024 Swiss Darts Trophy and 8-3 to Ross Smith at the 2026 International Darts Open. At the 2026 World Championship he beat Jonny Clayton 5-2 in the quarter-finals before a 6-1 semi-final defeat to Luke Littler. His eighth ranking title came at Players Championship 7 in March 2026, where he beat Alan Soutar 8-3.

His autumn of 2026 has brought mixed results. He beat William O'Connor 2-1 in sets at the World Grand Prix before losing 3-2 to Gian van Veen, and at the Dutch Darts Championship he beat Dirk van Duijvenbode 6-5 and Ross Smith 6-4 before a 6-3 quarter-final defeat to Van Veen. He then lost 6-1 to Kim Huybrechts in the first round of the European Championship. The PDC records four nine-dart finishes for him across all of its events. He throws 32-gram Harrows darts and walks on to "Paranoid" by Black Sabbath.