HAIR WE GO!

Rydz brushes past Owen as crowd take the mick

- MIKE WALTERS

CALLAN RYDZ harnessed a boisterous crowd's songs about his comb over barnet to edge a hair-raising thriller against Rob Owen.

The Geordie recovered from two sets down to beat the Iceland delivery driver from Bridgend to book a PDC World Championship quarter-final with Michael van Gerwen, who defeated Jeffrey de Graff 4-2, and admitted the noisy soundtrack inspired his fightback.

Rydz was struggling to get a foothold in the contest until the first mainly English chorus line of the tournament around 30 per cent of tickets were snapped up by Germans - piped up with refrains of, "Callan Rydz, he's got s*** hair but we don't care" and "He's got a birds' nest on his head."

After ending Owen's fine run at Alexandra Palace with 12 maximum 180s and a 97.32 average, he said: "I'm not going to cry about it - I have the worst friends in the world and I get far worse off them.