ALEXANDRA PALACE — Ok, we’re doing this. Luke Littler is in a second World Darts Championship final. He is 17 years old. He has won 15 of his 19 professional semi-finals. This shouldn’t be happening. This doesn’t happen. This is a new world. His world.
You feel for Stephen Bunting, whose performance could have beaten basically anyone else alive. And yet he met a force so oppressive, so inevitable, it can bend the future to its will.
13 180s. A 105 average. 44 per cent on doubles. A 170 finish to win the penultimate leg. Scoring so relentless it kills hope and forces mistakes which simply cannot be made.
The deals, drives and dollars that changed Luke Littler's life
Read MoreSomehow, this has become expected from Littler. Not once over the past three weeks has he seemed genuinely threatened, even in underperformance. His underperformance is most people’s high performance.
Last year’s tournament set a standard, then a world-leading 10 trophies raised it. He has now won £1.3m in prize money alone, ignoring sponsorship deals with National Rail, Xbox, Boohoo Man and KP Nuts.
All this could make the novelty, the beauty, wear off. Don’t let it. Bring back the novelty, the utter wonderment, that fairy tale feeling. Drink it in, bathe in it. This is as good as sport, as human entertainment, gets. Take this for what it is – legend happening live, the gradual birth of a god.
Littler’s talent and youthful appeal are so potent they have made a middling Pitbull song popular and largely made people forget about the kebab stuff, which was, in hindsight, pretty weird. There is no limit to where he goes and where he takes darts with him.
An evening at Alexandra Palace is supposed to be a chance to get drunk and dress up, a joyous temple to forget your worries for a while. And yet, for a brief moment, Littler makes it the centre of the sporting world. People now realise they’re being given an audience with something bigger and better than themselves.
He’s increasingly become the master of these micro-interactions with the crowd, pulling faces after every sub-standard visit as if to apologise, a wink and thumbs-up after a nice double. It’s less overt but more powerful than the fist-pumping and hollering, as if he’s playing to 3,500 friends, or disciples, and letting them all in on the joke.
The World Darts Championship is Luke Littler’s to lose
Read MoreThere is now only one man capable of stopping what has felt like fate since Littler sidled up to the oche to begin the future in December 2023. Michael van Gerwen is back where he believes he belongs, the centre of the Alexandra Palace action and attention, into a seventh World Championship final since 2013, palming off a wasteful Chris Dobey to get there.
There was the suspicion Van Gerwen would never forgive himself if he didn’t make it this far, through a quarter of the draw which started with just three other players who had ever won a TV tournament and had broken two of them by the third round. He considers major finals his birthright, and has won at least three of every televised trophy in darts.
This was not his best, but it was enough to win and enough to suggest he is still capable of lifting the Sid Waddell Trophy.
The Dutchman is different now – age and children have broadened his once singular existence – but he remains among the three best players in the sport. Even if recent inconsistency has pierced his armour of invincibility, he still belongs here.
But whether that will be enough to beat or even really challenge Littler is a different question. He is a more mature, bolder, more brilliant player than lost last year’s showpiece, aided by that experience. He is 17 years old, and this is happening.
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