After the second set of the final of the World Darts Championship, one of the world’s biggest indoor sports, Luke Littler calmly walked off the stage, smiled wryly at his family and rubbed his hands together. As if he had the foresight that he would soon be beaten.
The man – no, the boy – 3,000 people packed into London’s Alexandra Palace to see the history of produce, and millions more watching at home and in pubs around the UK and around the world – can only be seen in cool comfort or pomp. I wasn’t doing it with style. , but has a derogatory flavor.
The darts final was won more spectacularly. Phil Taylor, the sport’s all-time great, had three 7-0 whitewashes in his prime. But it wasn’t like this. Never like it.
Luke Littler is 17 years old. He has a beard that older men want to grow, and in a sport with a history rooted in bars, Littler is not yet allowed to drink.
Still, he already has the swagger and stage persona of someone ready to take the sport down a path it’s never taken before, and that’s exactly what he’s already doing.
Like Pele and Serena Williams, Littler won one of the biggest awards in sports while still a teenager. (Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Images)
Littler has already helped bring darts into the mainstream on subscription service Sky Sports. This is an increase of almost 200% for some tournaments in 2024. (the only non-football event in the broadcaster’s history), Littler, then 16, lost to Luke Humphries.
Now he has earned his place in the pantheon of young sports legends by becoming a world champion. Sure, Pele was good at soccer at the age of 17, but could he have thrown three treble 20s into the red, green and black boards from almost 2.5 meters away?
Serena Williams won the US Open at 17, Ian Thorpe was the same age when he won Olympic swimming gold, Sachin Tendulkar was 16 when he made his India debut and snooker magician Ronnie O’Sullivan won the British Championships. I was 17 when I did it. What sets Littler apart in his particular field is that he is now the best player in the world in his entire sport before he reaches adulthood.
deeper
How did darts, a traditional ‘pub game’, become Britain’s must-watch sport?
Why is he so good? Is it an innate talent? Well, he has been playing darts since his dad bought him a magnetic dartboard from a pound shop when he was 18 months old. He’s not old enough to vote, but he’s been practicing for this moment basically his entire short life.
And it’s not just the vitality and freshness of youth. Littler was left mentally scarred by losing last year’s final despite being up 4-2 (he watched it again hours before Friday’s game to summarize what went wrong), but he is relentless in his pursuit of victory here in north London. It was ruthless. A 4-0 lead over three-time champion Michael van Gerwen, one of the greatest arrow throwers of all time.
The youngster later said he felt nervous after taking an early lead, but his actions to eliminate one of the best players in the world suggested the opposite.
He stubbornly pounded the treble bed like he was using a dart-sized jackhammer, drilling perfect little holes in the helpless board as he carved his way to greatness.
Throwing his hands like a sports artist, Littler smiled and waved at the crowd and talked to them and himself, in complete control of his own destiny.
Littler surpassed Van Gerwen’s record as the youngest darts world champion in history (James Fearn/Getty Images).
He wasn’t just trying to win, he was trying to make darts out of the gods along the way. He repeatedly left himself on 170, the biggest outshot of a dart to win leg, which happened too often to be unintentional. Darts players usually look painful when they miss the 9th dart (i.e. perfection, winning the leg with the fewest possible throws), but when Littler missed the 7th dart, he calmly lifted his shoulder as if he knew there would be another chance. I shrugged it off. .
The helpless Van Gerwen, who has won 157 Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) titles, could only scowl and scowl like Dick Dastardly in a lime green shirt.
The Dutchman was once the youngest world champion at 24 years old. The symbolism of the heavy dart-shaped baton being handed down to the next generation here was undeniable.
Van Gerwen rallied by Littler’s coattails, swapping the next six sets like champions do, but it was never enough in front of a drunken, hurling, rabidly partisan crowd. He may look like a combination of a Bond villain – part Blofeld with a shiny bald head, part Jaws with grills on his ribs – but he could play a bad guy for a long time against a tidal wave of high notes and tones.
Little was so good. Every time Van Gerwen came up for air, the teenager would push him into the water with one hand and hit a double 10 with the other.
“Wow… wow.” Littler muttered to himself as he hit double 16 to win 7-3, seal the title and become £500,000 ($621,056 at current conversion rates) richer. He muttered “I can’t believe it” three times in an interview immediately after the game.
“Once it was 2-0 I started getting nervous, but I told myself, ‘Just relax.’
“My first fight with Ryan Meikle, it was a really important fight.”
Littler cried on stage after his second-round win over Meikle before Christmas. He broke down and couldn’t finish the interview, so he left the stage and went to hug his mother.
On the train journey to London earlier that day, he couldn’t wait for the game to start. But when he threw his first dart, he basically changed his words and bottled them.
He later said this after calming himself down. “I have never felt that way. “It felt strange… That was the biggest stage. “It was probably the hardest game I’ve ever played.”
To prove his otherworldly nature, he produced the greatest set of darts in World Championship history at the end of the “toughest” match, despite averaging over 140. He started it off like a glorified bar. Players have incredibly high standards of their own.
“I’m thinking to myself, ‘What are you doing? Just relax,’ Littler said.
Littler walks off to face Michael van Gerwen in the final at Alexandra Palace (James Fearn/Getty Images)
An ordinary kid from Runcorn, a small town near Liverpool in north-west England who loves kebabs and loves football, it’s no surprise that he has a huge burden on his young shoulders to be a contender to lift the title at the young age of just 17. .
Since then, he has shown no hesitation throughout the tournament, reflecting his rise from 164th to 4th in the world rankings last year.
Despite the unimaginable increase in money, fame, popularity and exposure, 1.5 million Instagram followers, constant TV appearances and mixing it up with Max Verstappen or his heroes at Manchester United, he has remained focused and won 10 PDCs. Won titles, premierships and grand championships. They have reached Slam and World Series finals, achieved four perfect nine-darters and won more than £1m ($1.2m) in prize money.
He was the most searched athlete of the year on Google and came second in the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award.
Sky Sports Darts presenter Emma Paton said: “Littler’s friendliness won people over.” athletic Early in the tournament. “He took the sport somewhere else… The Darts have never been this exposed before. It’s not because of what he did in the sport, which is funny, by the way, but it’s the impact he had on the sport.
“Compared to many other sportspeople, darts players are fresh, honest and fundamentally themselves, and Luke is no different. He’s just a kid at the end of the day.
“People asked me, ‘What’s it like talking to Luke Littler?’ ‘I don’t think I have much to say,’ he said. I’m like, ‘He’s such a cold person, he doesn’t really care, he’s just a 17-year-old kid.’”
Darts-obsessed Littler plays exactly like a child having fun on stage and writing off his own darts dream bucket list.
He has an incredible ability to completely remove himself from the enormity of the event, chat with the crowd, ignore his opponents and play his own game, a game of old sports clichés.
He loves showing off the skills he has honed over years of practice and expanding the possibilities and limits he previously thought the sport had. He hits erratic setup shots and hits double-doubles or two bullseyes. He essentially takes the practice board to the world stage.
And when he needs to, a steely resolve shines from his eyes and the unforgiving rhythms of the 180s take over. He can turn it on like few have ever done in the sport before.
Littler’s emotional reaction after winning the PDC World Championship (Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Images)
“I sometimes say a star is born every 17 years.” said a humble Van Gerwen. “He’s one of them… Every time he had the chance, every time he needed to hurt me, he did.”
World champion, famous millionaire. Besides impending adulthood, what on earth is next?
“I just want to add to it, maybe get a few more things,” Littler said. “I’m sure if I want a 16th (Taylor’s world title record) I can probably get it.
“I’ve been doing this on a magnetic board in diapers since I was 18 months old.
“When I told my friends there was a darts competition, they were like, ‘Darts?!’ ‘So, Dart, didn’t you see it?’
Now they’re seeing it all thanks to an unassuming 17-year-old who can throw an arrow like few before could.
(Top photo: Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Images)
