Luke Littler gets ultimate revenge on Ian White but darts wonderkid given reality check
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Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Littler, if you think your year is done?. After Luke Littler’s march into the last 16 at the Paddy Power PDC World Championship, he has one more appointment to fulfil in 2024. A date with burly Geordie dark horse Ryan Joyce on Monday, for a place in the quarter-finals on New Year’s Day, is the boy wonder’s reward for a flattering 4-1 defeat of Ian White on another track from his Saturday night fever album.
And that will be a wrap. Thank you, 2024, you’ve been a wonderful audience - but just watch Luke the Nuke go in 2025. In the ultimate generation game, Littler exacted token revenge on White for distant fixtures in the Runcorn pub league, when White regularly beat his grandfather.
It wasn’t always convincing. In the worst-case scenario, we feared that after Christmas Day and Boxing Day would come doomsday. Lights out, tinsel down, cancel that New Year party. But a reminder: Luke Littler is 17 years old. Give the kid a break. They said he would burn out on the relentless carousel of the Premier League. Pull the other one - he won the darned thing. They said teenage naivety would run aground when it encountered adult cynicism in the big, bad world. Another cracking joke - Littler has won 10 titles in his debut season as a professional, yielding more than £1 million in prize money.
They said he couldn’t possibly sustain his fairytale to last year’s final as a 16-year-old. But if the Grand Slam, Premier League and World Series finals don’t ring any bells, there’s nobody home in the belfry. And they said darts wasn’t a ‘proper’ sport. Tell that to the masses who voted Littler runner-up in the BBC ’s Sports Personality of the Year poll.
