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Luke Littler won the Grand Slam of Darts
Luke Littler won the Grand Slam of Darts

Most darts players will never earn what Luke Littler has managed aged 17 in just 11 months, says Paul Nicholson

By Paul Nicholson
Darts
Sun November 24, 2024 · 2d ago

Luke Littler can't stop breaking records and in this week's column, Paul Nicholson ponders how long it would take other pros to hit similar heights.

HE’S WON HOW MANY?!

Luke Littler’s exploits at the Grand Slam of Darts saw him become just the fourth different player after Phil Taylor, Michael van Gerwen and Peter Wright to win 10 titles in a season, which has taken him to over one million pounds in total prize money.

To do that in his first attempt is staggering and you wonder how many more he’ll win in future years.

However, I very much doubt he’ll ever get close to the record number of titles in one calendar year which is 25.

I know we have more tournaments now than ever before – and there’s an extra European Tour event next year – but back when MVG was that insanely dominant, the chasing pack were not as good as they are now.

There are so many players – at all stages of the age spectrum – who can produce a great performance that can take anyone out.

Winning 25 tournaments these days is going to be nigh on impossible. Michael was so far ahead of everyone else when he did it, but I don’t think the gulf between Littler and everyone else will ever be quite like it. That’s testament to the tour rather than to the detriment of Littler.

MVG only had to fend off a few potential rivals good enough to stop him. Littler has an army of them.

We don’t know what the future holds for Littler or what targets he can hit – but it’ll be exciting finding out.

WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE?

A lot has been made of Luke Littler getting to world number five in one year with over £500,000 in ranking money on the Order of Merit and it truly is a remarkable feat.

This obviously includes the £200,000 he collected from being runner-up at the World Championship so in some ways his debut year started at the end of ‘last season’.

Rob Cross reached world number three after winning the World Championship at the very end of his debut season so that’s technically the highest ascent the sport has ever seen when it comes to rankings.

But let that take nothing away from what Littler has achieved.

If you include prize money earned in all competitions, including the unranked Premier League winners’ cheque of £275,000, he’s now broken through the £1 million barrier in just 11 months!

Phil Taylor wouldn’t have been able to do that in any single season during his career due to the prize money being much less during his peak years but even in this era it’s very hard for anyone to do.

Michael van Gerwen would have done it in 2019 due to the collection of major titles he won after picking up £500,000 for the world title while Luke Humphries has also gone past one million pounds in 2024 if you include his Ally Pally prize.

These are very much the exceptions to the rule.

In this era, it would take your average top 16 player about three to five years to earn £1 million in total prize money. Someone ranked 20 to 30 in the world may take closer to five to six years.

Journeyman players outside the top 50 may never get there – unless there was a huge spike in prize money.

Littler has won more ranking money in 11 months than I did in my career, which lasted 10 years. And I won a major and reached world number nine!

MAXIMUM MACHINE

Luke Littler hit a whopping sixty 180s in the Grand Slam of Darts, which broke the tournament record of 52 set by Adrian Lewis in 2013.

When you think that he won two of his best-of-31 leg matches in less than 20 legs, that’s remarkable.

There’s probably never been anyone better at hitting maximums than Littler when he’s on form; including the likes of Lewis, Dave Chisnall, Gary Anderson and MVG.

One of the main reasons why he’s a big 180 hitter is because of the way he throws the darts so ferociously. He throws them like the dartboard is 12 feet away instead of almost eight!

I spoke to a few colleagues in the industry a while back and we questioned whether the balance of his darts was right. It was almost as if the points were too long and weren’t hitting the board with much balance.

But what he’s educating us on is that maybe there's a different way to play.

Some of those 180s you couldn’t even see one of those darts because they are so close together even after the zoom shot went in. They're getting so close together.

It’s like he’s playing the game with cheat codes and it's mind boggling. It's no wonder he has won so much in his first season because he's a revolutionary player.

He's not another version of Van Gerwen. He's not another Phil Taylor. He's the first Luke Littler.

EVOLUTION

It seems strange to talk about how his game has evolved when he’s so young. But I bet when he was of the age of 12 and 13 playing in the JDC, he was probably doing things that were quite normal like going for double 18 instead of 16 double 10.

But over the course of time, because he thinks differently, he’s found his own way of doing things.

Occasionally across all sports you get those stars that make you think ‘he’s a bit different’ – and Littler is one of those in darts.

He’s like a prodigy golfer who won’t lay up with 295 yards left – they’ll get the three wood out and try and get on the green.

He’s like a cricketer who has decided he’s going to hit a six before the ball has been bowled.

He plays the game like it’s just a lot of fun to him…but it’s terrifying for everyone else.

The way he thinks and using the skill that he's got, his opponents are standing back thinking ‘oh no’. And that is the sign of a great player, not a good player. It's someone who is genuinely, frighteningly good.

There was a moment when trailing 13-10 in the Grand Slam semi-finals when he went treble 10, double 10 when Gary Anderson was on a finish.

It’s something Michael Smith does and that’s probably where Littler got it from but everyone else would have gone big 10 double top, and that’s still the method that you’d teach younger players.

But mavericks do things differently, and back it up with the win. If occasionally it goes wrong he’ll get mocked by some of the harshest critics but most of the time, it’s working.

It’s just one part of his play sheet.

Back in the eighties Eric Bristow once went single eight double 16 on 40, so maybe you have to be a special kind of player to want to try such new things against the grain.

Littler’s approaches are starting to make me think that I’m old school. When someone's got 52 left, I believe that if you want to leave tops or any other double, you need to look at the big numbers.

But I’m seeing more and more players these days going for treble 12. I’m not convinced on the rationale of it keeping you focused on smaller targets but I wouldn’t tell anyone like Fallon Sherrock – who likes to do this – that she’s wrong.

It is risky because either side of 12 are numbers that won’t leave you a double with the next dart and if Littler strays into treble six when aiming at treble 10, he’ll leave himself double 16 which isn’t the one he wants.

A lot of other players – myself included – have been guilty down the years of being quite defeatist in our approach. Or at best, playing too safe.

But he takes risks with so much confidence that they won’t feel like risks to him. He doesn’t think he’ll miss.

HUNDRED UP!

Not only is he racking up the 100+ averages at the same regularity as Phil Taylor and Michael van Gerwen during their heydays when it just felt like a guarantee, but he’s also thrashing top opponents with zero mercy.

Even great players down the years don’t have that level of killer instinct where you can win quarter-finals and finals 16-2 and 16-3 in around 30 minutes!

He doesn’t just think about winning. It’s like his objective is to win by as big a margin as possible.

You can tell he’s come from the Call of Duty generation where you think the more kills you win by, the more you go up the league table.

We know how much he loves his video games and maybe the way he plays darts is reflective of ruthless video game thinking. Just like when people play FIFA trying to score as many goals as possible rather than playing out a more realistic 2-1 scoreline.

A few years ago at a European Tour event, I was staying in a hotel with many other players that happened to have a lounge area where you could play FIFA.

While I was spending my time getting ready for commentating and things like that, you could not tear some of these young players away from that game. It wasn’t a laugh. It was ruthless.

Littler is at the pinnacle of the new generation that don’t care who you are – they just want to smash you to pieces in any competition. Whether its gaming or on the dartboard.

BLINK AND YOU’LL BE SAD TO MISS HIM

How many people these days watch darts, football, cricket, golf, tennis or any other sport while looking at their phone at the same time.

I bet hardly anyone did that during Littler’s clash with Anderson. I certainly didn’t.

It was so engaging you just couldn’t keep your eyes of it – and part of that is down to the speed that he plays at and the feeling that something special is just a moment away.

The match lasted just an hour for 31 legs of darts which is perfect for a generation of people that have very little attention span.

He’s learned to be comfortable playing at the pace he does and he makes other quick players seem slow by comparison.

I used to think Adrian Lewis was fast, but he’s not compared to Littler. And in comparison, I look almost glacial!

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