PDC World Darts 2018: Phil Taylor defeats Keegan Brown to seal quarter-final place

Taylor won eight successive world titles between 1995 and 2002, but has not won the tournament since 2013

Sixteen-time world champion Phil Taylor moved into the PDC World Championship quarter-finals with a 4-0 victory over Keegan Brown.

Englishman Taylor, 57, is competing at his final event before he retires, and he wasted no time in demolishing his 25-year-old opponent Brown, the 2014 PDC world youth champion.

Taylor will next play 2017 finalist Gary Anderson, who beat Steve West 4-2.

"I used to rule the world but I don't now. The pressure is off," Taylor said.

"I can enjoy it," he told Sky Sports. "I felt comfortable, the only thing I thought was to put Keegan under pressure, because probably this was the biggest occasion of his life,

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"Then he started to enjoy the pressure and play well, so even when I was 3-0 up you were still thinking he could come back. I had to slow down and take extra time."

In the day's other games, Belgium's 2017 world youth champion Dimitri van den Burgh, 23, beat Austria's Mensur Suljovic 4-0 to set up a quarter-final meeting with Englishman Rob Cross, who continued his run with a 4-1 victory over Scotland's John Henderson.

England's Darren Webster beat Spaniard Toni Alcinas in straight sets to book his place in the last eight and will next play Wales' Jamie Lewis, who beat James Richardson 4-1.

Taylor, an iconic figure in darts, played a key role in the sport's transformation into the phenomenon it is today.

At the peak of his powers he won eight successive world titles between 1995 and 2002, but he has not won the tournament since 2013.