ALEXANDRA PALACE — Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord and, god, was it fun. The future has begun, and it’s Luke Litter’s plaything. He can make this life, this sport, this world, whatever he chooses. For at 17 he is world champion, a millionaire, and a darting deity.
There is no doubt this is one of the iconic British sporting achievements, from perhaps its most fascinating current sportsperson. To say no-one has done something like this before in darts risks underselling it: the previous youngest winner of the Sid Waddell Trophy was 24.
Only 3,500 were actually in the costumed congregation, but that number will only rise as the story is told and retold, as memory becomes myth. Yes grandchild, I was the one in the Lederhosen and Paddy Power pants.
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Read MoreLittler swaggered onto an Ally Pally stage pregnant with possibility, swaying his hips and puffing his chest like he’d just entered a Western saloon with time to kill and vengeance to wreak. Michael van Gerwen was booed before his walk-on music even began, instantly cast as the heel, the villain, a barrier blocking joy and wonder.
This was framed as prodigy against master, but it was deeper than that. Van Gerwen was not so much raging against the dying of the light as against a darting future bigger than him, one which doesn’t feature him at its heart.
He doesn’t need to do this anymore. He already has everything; at least three of every major title, nearly £12m in career winnings, five years at No 1 and the respect of the world. But like every true great, he just wants more. This was pure pride and ambition and greed, a desire of nothing less pure than to be better than best.
And now he’s seen what the best looks like, and it’s screaming into the ether, sobbing on the stage and staring to the heavens. It’s a hitting a near 103 average, 56 per cent of it’s doubles and 12 180s. It’s taking the Sid Waddell Trophy from Sir Chris Hoy. It’s Luke Littler.
Littler’s was a violent victory, a public flogging, a pronouncement that everyone else in the sport is now chasing him, that the level has been raised. The start was understandably nervy, wayward darts wandering into the five sector and the one.
Yet even in a first set when both averaged in the low 90s, Littler was still just slightly better, just holding Van Gerwen at arm’s length, like an adult with a rampaging toddler. The standard lifted in the second, and Littler lifted with it. An average of 115, winning all three legs. This was one of three sets which topped 110.
And then somehow he was 4-0 up, with Van Gerwen hitting just 18 per cent of his doubles, left vacantly staring into the distance. If you’re new to this: that’s catastrophic. 36 per cent would not have been good enough.
Littler’s natural aptitude for darts is psychological rather than physical, an innate stability and serenity very rarely disturbed. Even as Van Gerwen rescued some air of respectability, winning two of the following three sets, Littler barely appeared to notice.
Darts at its best is a contact sport, a battle of wills where you can mentally break your opponent with darts alone. Van Gerwen must have wished he could have made any contact with Littler at all.
Where does a 17-year-old world champion go next? Where is there to climb from the top of the mountain? You can climb it again, which you assume he will, but it invariably won’t be the same, the high not quite as high, especially if this easy dominance continues.
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