Christian “Ian” Perez, the NDFP#2 ranked player, faced two-time World Darts Champion and number 4 world ranked PDC player John Part for the championship of the recently concluded $ 122,100 Shanghai International Darts Open, the biggest steel tip darts tournament in Asia, last October 17, 2009, at the Sports Hotel in Shanghai.

The best of 19 legs started with John Part winning the diddle for the bulls and won game 1. Ian started game two and won the leg after an exchange of ton 80’s. The winner alternated till it reached game 7 with the score tied at 3-3 apiece and a break was declared. After an unusually long-long break of more than 10 minutes the match was resumed and Ian won game 7 to take the lead 4-3. At this time John Part found his world caliber rhythm and slowly but surely went on to win 10-4.

Leading to the finals, Ian Perez was seeded no.14 after the 2 day eliminations, beat Shuntaro Takamatsu of Japan 5-1 in the top 64, Scott Mackenzie of Hongkong in the top 32 and faced the number 3 seed and the recent French Open winner Arby Briones of the Philippines in the top 16, in an exciting down the wire finish in the best of 13 leg match. The match was tied 5-5 a piece going to the last three legs when Ian exploded and won the last two legs 7-5.

The top 8 match saw Perez going against the no.1 player of New Zealand , Warren Parry ,who earlier beat Gary Mawson of Canada 7-1. Perry took a commanding 5-1 lead, in the best of 15 legs, before the half time break. After the break, the score went 6-2, after which Perez took a phenomenal 6 straight legs to win 8-6.

In the semi-finals, Perez faced another Filipino, Lourence Ilagan, the number 2 seed and the recent top 4 finisher of the Winmau World Masters. Ilagan was leading 3-1 and continued to win a leg each before Perez again exploded with 7 straight wins to beat Ilagan 9-4.

Ian Perez became an instant celebrity with his boyish young and new face in the worlds of darts. The Shanghai International Darts Open is his first international open singles tournament and for a novice competing among the world’s best, he did really well. Ian started playing darts at a young age winning the first Youth Singles Championship of the Darterong Pinoy in 1999. In the last 3 years, he consistently fluctuated as either the number 1 or number 2 ranked player of the NDFP for winning 6 major ranking NDFP events and 2 Regional singles events in the last 3 years and one of the only four national masters of the NDFP.

Ian hails from Koronadal City in South Cotabato, where he graduated BS Agriculture major in Plant Pathology from Notre Dame of Marbel University in 2002. Ian is a Robson dart player in the last twelve years.