{"id":390165,"date":"2026-01-04T02:34:05","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T02:34:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/390165\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T02:34:05","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T02:34:05","slug":"luke-littler-wins-final-of-world-darts-championship-score-7-1-147-finish-gian-van-veen-first-back-to-back-winner-in-10-years-reaction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/390165\/","title":{"rendered":"Luke Littler wins final of World Darts Championship, score, 7-1, 147 finish, Gian van Veen, first back-to-back winner in 10 years, reaction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Darts phenom Luke Littler has become the first player in ten years to go back-to-back in the World Darts Championship after routing Gian van Veen 7-1 in the final. <\/p>\n<p>Littler was simply unstoppable, not giving his Dutch opponent a chance after falling in an early 1-0 hole.<\/p>\n<p>Watch the world\u2019s best darts tournaments LIVE on Kayo Sports | <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kayosports.com.au\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">New to Kayo? Join now and get your first month for just $1.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img class=\"i-amphtml-fill-content i-amphtml-replaced-content\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/poster-fallback.png\"\/><\/p>\n<p>With the match on the line, the 18-year-old needed to throw a difficult 147 finish to end the game, which he did, to collect the $1.75m prize. <\/p>\n<p>After sealing victory, the world number one took an emotional moment of reflection with his head in his arms.<\/p>\n<p>Littler quoted boxing champ and countryman Anthony Joshua in his interview with Sky Sports.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEveryone knows what happened with Anthony Joshua and his team, rest in peace to his friends, just like AJ said \u2026 the first time was so nice, I had to do it twice,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wasn\u2019t happy going into the break 1-0 down, but I had to kick on from there. I said just give it time, you\u2019ll find it. It all came to plan. Gian, what a tournament, he can be very happy for himself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This year\u2019s tournament saw the prizepool increase significantly, with Littler collecting $1.75 million (AUD).<\/p>\n<p>Luke Littler becomes the first back-to-back WDC winner since 2016.Source: Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is life-changing for anyone. Even the first round was doubled. It\u2019s life-changing, this win has just increased that gap from Luke Humphries and I\u2019m in the clear as world number one,\u201d Littler said.<\/p>\n<p>The 23-year-old van Veen admitted he simply wasn\u2019t good enough and didn\u2019t play near his best darts.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe scoring maybe tonight wasn\u2019t my greatest game in the whole tournament. Luke wasn\u2019t in the mood to give me any more chances. He played phenomenally. I missed too many chances to make it an even game. That\u2019s why he\u2019s world number one by a margin now,\u201d van Veen said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cToday I would have liked to lift up the title but I would have liked to give Luke a game and that\u2019s what I didn\u2019t do today. I\u2019m very proud of getting to the final, number three in the world now, Dutch number one. I\u2019m very proud of myself but disappointed today.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Darts phenom Luke Littler has become the first player in ten years to go back-to-back in the World&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":390166,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[8075,64,63,208965,11096,208966,208968,208969,1208,2057,3471,208970,2022,208962,208964,3583,208967,2643,85,3586,208963,10911],"class_list":["post-390165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-anthony-joshua","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-back-to-back-winner","tag-daniel-nuttall","tag-darts-phenom","tag-darts-tournaments","tag-dramatic-semi-finals","tag-england","tag-europe","tag-final-match","tag-gian-van-veen","tag-london","tag-luke-humphries","tag-luke-littler","tag-northern-europe","tag-quoted-boxing-champ","tag-sky-sports","tag-sports","tag-united-kingdom","tag-wins-final","tag-world-number"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}