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Luke Littler looked up and down the rows of filled seats, the line of microphones pointed at his mouth, the expectant faces hanging on his every word. This has long been one of his least favourite parts of the job, a fact he scarcely bothers to conceal. Occasionally everyone has to sit and wait while he sends a text. He leaves as soon as he is legitimately able. But there is of course a silver lining: if he’s sitting in the hot seat, it means he’s won.
“Youse are probably all bored of seeing me now,” he said. “But I’m going to be here for many more years.” And frankly, while the going is this good, why not? A second world title in a row, a 10th major trophy in just 21 attempts, the first ever £1m prize in the sport. Barry Hearn wants to get that up to £5m within the decade on a wave of Saudi investment. He’s 18 years old. Nobody in the sport is remotely as good as him. The boy is fresh and the boy is hungry and the boy is greedy.
“I want to put down a legacy here,” he said not long after beating Gian van Veen in an embarrassingly one-sided world final. “I want to win so many trophies. There’s so many years left. We don’t stop here. We keep going.”
If he looked exhausted 12 months ago, emotionally and physically drained after defeating Michael van Gerwen to scale the summit for the first time, by now he has become luxuriously accustomed to the sensation. This in itself may be the shrillest warning to the chasing pack: if they thought it was hard dethroning Littler when he merely wanted to win, try doing it when he brusquely expects to.
Van Veen was simply the latest challenger to singe in the heat of battle: the debilitating awareness that 15-dart legs on throw may not be good enough, that this 96 or 127 shot will probably have to go, that your 200-point lead in the leg is by no means impregnable. The 23-year-old from the Netherlands may just be the second best player in the world on current form, coming into the final on a wave of confidence, and Littler pretty much denuded him.
“If you leave a double after 12 darts, most of the time you can’t even come back, because he’s that good,” said Van Veen. “Leave a finish after nine, and if you miss, that’s it. Leg gone. That’s what Luke Littler does to you.” This is what Phil Taylor used to do to you too, and in his comportment and aggression Littler is quite possibly the closest the sport has seen to Taylor since he won his last world title in 2013.
Off the oche, of course, there are clear differences between them in age, temperament and approach. Taylor was the consummate workaholic; Littler practices only as much as he needs to stay match-sharp. Taylor harboured a lifelong obsession with money; for Littler it remains a minor concern, despite the fact that on Saturday night he earned in 43 minutes almost as much as Taylor accumulated in the course of winning 16 world titles.
We can probably surmise how Taylor secretly feels about that. But at least he can comfort himself with the fact that his record tally will never be beaten. Right? Right? Yet when the question of catching Taylor was put to Littler, you could see the cogs whirring. “Obviously it’s so far away,” he said. “What’s it, 14 to go? Another 15, 16 years, I’d say.”
He might not even have been joking. Cards on the table, and feel free to loop back to this page in a couple of decades if we’re all still around. I think Littler gets to five world titles quite quickly. Perhaps even seven or eight with a fair wind. He may then eke out another couple over the subsequent years. But 16 – seriously, no. The argument against rests not with Van Veen, nor with Luke Humphries or Josh Rock or whomever else might emerge to challenge him in 2026, but in a curiously circular way with Littler himself.
There is a 15-year-old kid called Tergel Khurelkhuu currently living in the Mongolian Embassy in Kensington, his travel and lodgings being footed by the Mongolian government. He’s been spending the past few months playing London leagues and youth competitions. Last summer he became the first ever Asian player to hit No 1 in the junior world rankings. He’s already posting averages of over 90. Maybe he makes it as a pro, maybe he doesn’t. But he’s indicative of an accelerating trend: the next Luke Littler could quite frankly emerge from anywhere, and at any time.
He might not even have picked up a dart yet: the Junior Darts Corporation world championship runner-up Kaya Baysal from Burnley has been playing seriously for barely two years. He may not even be a he: beyond the rapidly improving Beau Greaves keep your eye on 16-year-old Zehra Gemi of Turkey, the current Lakeside girls’ champion. Go on darts TikTok and you will find countless live streams of gifted teenagers chucking gilded arrows to an audience of about nine. This is a revolution Littler helped to catalyse, and the irony is that one day it will almost certainly devour him.
Saturday night saw the retirements of the announcer John McDonald and the referee George Noble, two legends of the darting establishment. It felt fittingly symbolic that their last match should be the youngest ever world championship final. The world series lands in Saudi Arabia later this month. The world championship will move to the larger Great Hall at Alexandra Palace at the end of this year. Darts feels like an old house being stripped down and renovated at a furious rate, demolished and rebuilt until it is barely recognisable from its original form. Littler’s place at the peak may never have seemed more impregnable. But far below, the waters are rushing.
