by Now we know for sure. And maybe on some level we always suspected it, from the moment a 16-year-old kid came to these championships on a wave of froth and hype and good news and started doing whatever he wanted .
Everyone who has ever seen Luke Littler throw a dart, from Phil Taylor to his badly beaten junior opponents, will have told you that this was the next giant of the sport. But sometime in the future. Not right now. Certainly not now.
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But at half past nine on the second evening of 2024, the future changed dramatically and violently. On Wednesday evening, Littler Luke Humphries will play in the final of the Professional Darts Corporation world championship, and it feels inevitable, and it feels like something from a completely different reality.
Rob Cross, the 2018 world champion, was by far his strongest opponent, the first top-10 player to face him in every tournament, the first man to really push Littler to his outer limits. And in the end he was destroyed like the others, the score 6-2 in sets, Cross leaving the arena with nothing but a decent check and a funny story to tell the grandchildren.
Cross was not playing badly. In fact, he played superbly: a great start, an average of 103, 42% on his doubles. But he ran into a player not only better than him but visibly, embarrassingly better than him. Littler averaged 106 and took out 47% of his doubles, but the numbers really only tell the story here. It was how a teenager toyed and teased one of the world’s best: going for a single-16 on 36 to leave his favorite double-10, going for 180 on 182, getting a double bull finish of 132, sporting the menace and glee of a kid who knows, in his very bones, that the darts can cash every check his junk writes.
After that, he was just a 16-year-old kid again. He gave lighthearted, courageous answers to the same lighthearted, dismissive questions he had in every competition. And frankly, why not? Perhaps the last person who can put this feat into any kind of perspective is Littler himself, who has over 105 averages and other world bests as a routine. If you want to measure the strength of a storm, you check the historical record, you survey the destruction and leveling of buildings it leaves behind. You don’t put a microphone into the wind and ask it to explain itself.
We can now say for sure that the darts have changed forever in these surreal weeks. The 2007 final between Taylor and Raymond van Barneveld, the sudden rise of Fallon Sherrock, the biggest leg ever between Michael Smith and Michael van Gerwen: all these moved the dial, broke new ground, opened the door of the sport to another future. . But never has a new talent been announced so brilliantly or so excitingly. Van Gerwen was brilliant to win the World Masters at 17, but this was not brilliant, not this confident, this was not immediately impossible. The average age of a world champion in the PDC era is 38. But this is Littler’s life now, and somehow everyone else in it – past, present and future – feels ornate.
And yet. The only cloud on this limitless horizon came 90 minutes later, when Humphries dismantled Scott Williams 6-0 in one of the most comprehensive performances ever seen on the Alexandra Palace stage. His average of 109 was the ninth highest in world championship history, and his 18th consecutive victory ensured he retired from No. 1 in the world rankings.
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Humphries has been the best player in the world for the past year, a three-time major winner who feels his time is now. But Wednesday’s final will be a completely different challenge than any we have faced: a player who has never faced the stage, a crowd who will be determinedly against him, an opponent who is still improving and will punish every mistake . It’s a lot easier to look like a million dollars when you’re wearing the world No. 52. It’s not so easy when you know you have to find 12 arrow feet to hold your throw.
And one sad afternoon, Crois found out that much. It really was the start: racing out of the blocks with poise, panache and scoring power. It took him until the sixth round of the match to record his first triple, by which time Littler had already hit six, trailing in sets for the first time in the tournament. In contrast, Littler was starting to leak a dart into the 5 bed and complain about a draft across the stage. Perhaps it was the first small breach in the armor.
But Littler has so much angst and talent on hand that he can throw himself back into the zone within one outing. When Cross missed a dart at bullpen to win the second set, Littler shot a 74 to level the match, and was never behind after that. The crowd carried his little gladiator child to the stage, and they roared him off again. And on Wednesday night they will be back, along with millions around the world, drawn by the irresistible aroma of a great sporting legend.
