Luke Littler admits he’s “fair game” for rivals who sledge him now he’s turned 18. But the boy who became a world champion has already grown wary of opponents who raise their game, play out of their skin to beat him and then flop in the next round, saying: “It does annoy me.” Luke the Nuke begins the defence of his BetMGM Premier League title on Thursday with a repeat of his World Championship final against Michael van Gerwen - and a flea in his ear from MVG for turning up late at the players’ photoshoot on the Titanic slipway.

If Littler was expecting the target on his back to become a burden of adulthood, he didn’t have to wait long for the first shots to be fired. Van Gerwen scoffed: “How late was he - 45 minutes? They (the PDC) need to stop treating him like a baby - he’s not a baby any more, he’s 18 years old. “He has to learn, it’s a professional sport so you have to be responsible for your actions. If he turns up late for an interview, I don’t care - but there were seven other people waiting for him. That’s not very nice, is it?”.

Littler admitted he fell asleep in his hotel room for 25 minutes but laughed: “You know what Michael’s like. He called me lazy. I was just laughing at him. I’ve not watched the whole (Ally Pally) final back - only the winning double. He’s going to be up for it, he’s going to be hungry. But I am up for it as the reigning champion.”. An unscheduled power nap will be the least of Littler’s problems over the next 17 weeks of the Thursday night circus in seven different countries. In all three of his competitive defeats in 2025, Littler averaged 100-plus but somehow lost.

He noticed the trend starting in last year’s UK Open, when Aussie No.1 Damon Heta pipped him in a thunderous quarter-final - only to bow out in the last four. His Nukeship and world No.1 Luke Humphries are the bookies’ favourites to win the tournament, but Littler observed: “Over the past six to eight months, we know that there’s been a target on our backs and people will raise their games against us.

“Does it annoy me? Oh yeah. Oh, it does annoy me. They will probably play the 64th in the world and throw a mid-90s average but still get the win. With me, I just know, I just know within the first leg against anyone, I know what’s coming. “Ever since last year, I have known that these players are going to have to pull it out of the bag to beat me. But when they do beat me with a high average, I am like, ‘Yeah, you have got me there, but can you do it in the next game and the game after that?’ When a player does beat me with a high average, usually you see them go out next round.”.

Littler agrees with Humphries that the Premier League is harder to win than the PDC world title because it is a four-month “slog.” But Cool Hand Luke won’t be joining in any psychological jiggery-pokery to unsettle Littler in what he calls a “cut-throat” sport. Humphries said: “In this environment, it doesn’t matter how old you are. If you’re 16 and you’re in (professional) darts, you’re fair game straight away. And if you can’t handle it, you can’t be a darts player.