2024-01-05 01:00:00
Helped crown the world champion: Luke Littler
Two stars and one champion. This is how the final of the PDC World Darts Championship, which took place on Wednesday evening at Ally Pally in London, can be summarized. Star one was the legendary caller Russ Bray, whose voice has accompanied the tournament for 14 years. It will be unmistakably missed, like Michael Buffer’s in boxing, because it should be the last world championship final under Bray’s leadership. The other star was Luke Littler, the reigning world junior champion. Just 16 years old, although visually more like 40 plus, he had taken the older men under their belts over the course of the tournament; alphas like Raymond van Barneveld and Rob Cross were narrowly eliminated against him. As in this tournament, an unusually large number of favorites failed early: Wright, Aspinall and Wade in the second round, Kotzbrocken Price in the third round, Anderson in the round of 16, van Gerwen in the quarter-finals. There was another Luke waiting for Luke in the finale. Humphries by name, the world number one and champion of the evening. Both are British. The semi-finals, in which Rob Cross and Scott Williams lost, had already been British affairs.
Littler defied the pressure and played high averages from the start. Humphries held up well and was able to bring his A-game to a large extent, but was 1:2 behind after three sets before he was able to equalize. Littler secured the fifth and sixth sets again, so that with 2:4, from Humphries’ point of view, the fairy tale seemed to become reality: a 16-year-old Luke stormed the Ally Pally and became world champion from a standing start. From then on, Humphries showed what made him No. 1, he played his game with concentration and without excitement, and the game ended. With five sets in a row he went 7:4 and won the final.
This march is a little deceptive. Littler didn’t collapse, he played well until the end, Humphries was just better. In the end, Littler’s average was 101.13. Humphries’s at 103.67. Both had a maximum checkout (170) and hardly any double trouble on lay or set throws. With his second match dart, Humphries finished things off. He was also the deserved winner of the entire tournament. He hit 73 180s, 16 100+ checkouts and maintained an average of 100.46.
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