Category: Darts

• Welshman wins final 6-3 having beaten Luke Littler
• Price now second in table behind Luke Humphries

Gerwyn Price beat Nathan Aspinall 6-3 to win night three of the Premier League in Dublin, after earlier seeing off the world champion, Luke Littler.

Welshman Price – sporting an Ireland green shirt to help get the fans onside – had backed up his quarter-final win over Littler with another pristine display against Luke Humphries, the world No 1, coming from behind to win 6-3 and book his place in the final.

Double former world champion talks about falling out of love with the sport but hints a return could yet happen

“The thing with darts,” explains Adrian Lewis, “is you have to be in a happy place. It was for me, anyway. When you’re up, everything’s free, everything’s flowing. You don’t feel like you’ve got a burden on yourself.”

And when Lewis was free, when the darts flowed from his hand like water, when the 180s piled up around his ears, the man they called “Jackpot” could make this unfathomably difficult sport look like the simplest thing in the world. “Don’t think, just throw,” was his mantra. “Just get up there, get into a rhythm, bash-bash-bash.”

• Players faced whistling and booing from OVO Arena crowd
• PDC: ‘spectators who act inappropriately can be removed’

The Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) has warned that any fans who disrupt an event face being removed from the venue, after Thursday’s Premier League night in Glasgow was marred by spectators whistling at players as they went to throw.

Gerwyn Price responded to a heckler during his semi-final against Luke Humphries at the Ovo Arena, while the world No 1 also later had to contend with similar issues during his 6-5 final defeat by Luke Littler.

• Littler clinches last two sets to triumph 6-5
• Teenager beat Cross and Van Gerwen en route

Luke Littler said the referee Kirk Bevins did him no favours when he tried to quell the Glasgow crowd as he battled to a 6-5 win over Luke Humphries on night two of the Premier League.

The 18-year-old could not shrug off the world No 1 who came back four times at the OVO Hydro to make it 4-4 before before winning the ninth set, but Littler recovered to take the final two sets. However, Bevins’ intervention over the microphone to stop the whistling and jeering initially aimed at Humphries, it seemed, only added to the disruption and afterwards Littler admitted his frustration.

• World No 1 beats Chris Dobey 6-1 in Belfast final
• Van Gerwen edges Littler 6-5 but loses to Humphries

Luke Humphries triumphed on the opening night of the Premier League in Belfast as he cruised to a 6-1 win against Chris Dobey in the final.

The world No 1, who won the World Masters on Sunday, produced a finishing masterclass against Dobey, having earlier beaten Nathan Aspinall and Michael van Gerwen at the SSE Arena.

• 2023 world champion lost in first round of World Masters
• Smith to see specialist over arthritis in right hand

Former world champion Michael Smith has revealed he is suffering from arthritis in his right hand and is set to see a specialist.

Smith’s form has dropped off rapidly since winning the world title in 2023 in what was widely regarded as producing one of the greatest legs in the history of the sport. He made the revelation on his injury after losing in the first round of the revamped World Masters on Thursday night.

Darts prodigy has navigated being a teenager while simultaneously transforming his sport

Lionel Messi had scored one senior goal for Barcelona. Sachin Tendulkar had scored one Test century. Tiger Woods had played four tournaments on the PGA Tour and missed the cut in all of them. Ronnie O’Sullivan and Serena Williams had just won their first major titles. Simone Biles, though already richly garlanded at international level, was still waiting to compete in her first Olympics.

These were just the other child prodigies. What had you achieved by the age of 18? How many of your dreams and aspirations had been conceived, let alone realised? How much of the course of your life had been mapped out for you? At the age of 18, your correspondent had no idea what he wanted to do with his life and at the age of 39 arguably still doesn’t.

• New champion ‘would need 20 years to surpass 16 titles’
• ‘Everybody raises their game against you’

Phil Taylor has backed Luke Littler to break his record of 16 world titles but says the 17-year-old darts phenomenon will have to overcome “Man Utd syndrome” to do it.

Littler became the youngest player to win the world championship at Alexandra Palace earlier this month to complete a brilliant debut year on tour. After securing his first crown, Littler has said he could attempt to top Taylor’s tally if he has the desire over the next couple of decades.

The 17-year-old could reign supreme for years but at some point his unassailability risks dulling the sport’s edges

You know what? I reckon this is the year Luke Littler could finally be ready for the Premier League. Obviously we all still want to wrap him up in cotton wool. Obviously we’re all still deeply concerned about how the attention and pressure could affect his game. But my bet – if the evidence of the last 12 months is any guide – is that he might just be able to handle it.

Premier League champion, Grand Slam champion, a slew of victories across eight different countries in the Pro Tour, the European Tour and the World Series. Nine-dart finishes falling out of his sleeves. Had he not also gone on to win his first world championship at the age of 17, we would still be toasting one of the most remarkable full debut seasons ever seen in the sport’s professional era.

• ‘I’ve got the ability’ to break record, says 17-year-old
• Littler earns praise from Taylor and David Beckham

Luke Littler believes he can hunt down Phil Taylor’s record of 16 world titles after becoming the youngest ever PDC world darts champion.

The 17-year-old consolidated his status as the biggest star in the game by winning the PDC World Championship with a comprehensive 7-3 victory over Michael van Gerwen in Friday’s final at Alexandra Palace in London.

Luke Littler, 17, turned a dream final into a procession to become the youngest world champion in darts history

Read Jonathan Liew on semi-final night

Eric Bristow, Phil Taylor, Raymond van Barneveld, Michael van Gerwen: turns out this was the preamble. When the chroniclers of the future come to write the tale of this sport, they will recognise two eras: before Luke Littler, and after.

Luke Littler was too good for Nathan Aspinall while Michael van Gerwen beat Callan Rydz in an epic on quarter-final day

Dobey 0-1 Price (legs 2-3) Price steals the first set with a majestic 11-dart break! He made it back-to-back COMAAANNNNNNNNNS with a 180 on his first visit, nicking the darts in the process. An excellent 140 left him on 82 after nine – and he needed only two more on his next visit: bullseye, D16, COMANNNNNN.

In the context of Dobey’s quarter-final woes, that’s a brutal start from Price.

The Guardian and Observer sport photographer selects his favourite images of the year and recalls the stories behind them

It’s been quite a year, and one totally dominated by the “big three”: the men’s Euros in Germany and the Olympics and Paralympics in Paris. This a personal selection of my favourite pictures, a few of which haven’t been published before. Some have been chosen for their news value; others are here because there’s a nice tale behind them.