Phil Taylor kept alive his hopes of winning a 17th and final William Hill World Championship title by cruising into the quarter-finals at Alexandra Palace.

The 57-year-old, playing in his last tournament before retirement, was in peak form as he eased to a 4-0 win over former world youth champion Keegan Brown.

Taylor's performance will raise hopes that he can go all the way again after he averaged 101.34 and hit 12 of his 19 darts at doubles.

He will take on Gary Anderson on Friday night after the Scot overcame an apparent back problem to see off Steve West 4-2.

The two-time world champion, who beat Taylor in the 2015 final, looked far from his best but eventually got the job done before hobbling off the oche.

Qualifier Jamie Lewis continued his stunning run in the tournament as he also moved into the quarter-finals with a 4-1 win over James Richardson.

Lewis, who beat second seed Peter Wright on Tuesday, did not hit the same heights but still managed a 170 checkout to take the first leg of the third set.

Darren Webster reached the last eight for the first time since 2007 as he proved too good for Toni Alcinas, winning 4-0.

A 148 checkout was the highlight of the first set and Webster doubled the advantage in the second. Alcinas threatened a comeback when he led 2-0 in the third but Webster won the next three legs, before wrapping up the fourth without reply.

Joining him in the last eight is Belgium's Dimitri Van den Bergh, who knocked out Austria's Mensur Suljovic by the same margin.

The fifth-seeded Suljovic was second best in the first two sets, then missed a double 14 which would have given him the third and a possible way back into the contest.

Van den Bergh maintained his momentum in the fourth, wrapping up the success and setting up a quarter-final against England's Rob Cross, a 4-1 conqueror of Scotland's John Henderson.