Jonny Clayton starts his World Darts Championship campaign on Saturday afternoon, hoping to be inspired by fellow Welshman Jim Williams.

Clayton comes in as a seeded player into round two to face Irishman Steve Lennon at Alexandra Palace, with The Ferret having already seen Gerwyn Price and Williams progress.

But it was the third-ranked Welshman Williams who stole the headlines, rather than Price thanks to Williams’ brilliant shock victory over Peter Wright.

Williams has earned rich praise from Wright after the Welsh star dumped the two-time former world champion out of the Championship.

Williams, from Presteigne, defied his lowly ranking of world No.47 to beat “Snakebite” in a convincing 3-0 second round victory..

Williams admitted: “It’s a funny feeling when you see a great player like Peter struggling with his game.

“You want to kill him off but it’s someone you like watching and don’t really want to lose.

“I didn’t think I played that well and in both my games here so far, my focus has been terrible. There’s an opportunity now for me – and a lot of other guys – but everyone plays so well now that it’s no surprise to see a guy ranked 128th beat a guy ranked No.2.

“The standard at the moment is fantastic.”

Wright, who won the world championship in 2020 and 2022 and entered the event as fourth seed, struggled throughout and fell to a straight-sets second-round defeat against Williams.

The green hair, Grinch trousers and dancing with cheerleader pom-poms were the only festive cheer offered by Wright, who only managed a 83.87 average and made just four of 18 doubles during a disappointing display.

Wright was broken in the opening leg by Williams, who snatched the first set with a sensational 124 checkout on the bullseye in a final-leg decider, with the Scot then missing seven set darts when 2-1 up in the second.

Williams sealed the second set with a 13-darter and broke Wright a 70-finish in the opening leg of the third, before rattling off the next two legs to complete an emphatic victory and book a third-round meeting with either Raymond van Barneveld or Radek Szaganski.

“To be honest I don’t know what happened,” Wright admitted.

“Obviously I was nowhere near good enough to compete against Jim Williams, who is a fantastic player. I haven’t got a clue, practice has been going well but I don’t know what happened.

“Jim was the better player on the day. Maybe it would have been a different game if I’d hit one of the doubles to win the second set but I didn’t feel confident of actually getting it to be honest; it was ‘hopefully I hit it’ rather than ‘this one’s going in’. I just played terribly tonight and that’s it.”