Luke Littler will become world number one for the first time after booking his place in the Grand Slam of Darts final in Wolverhampton.<\/p>\n
The world champion’s 16-9 victory over the Netherlands’ Danny Noppert means he will overtake rival Luke Humphries to top the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) world rankings regardless of the result of Sunday evening’s final.<\/p>\n
Littler’s earnings over the two-year period that determine the Order of Merit total \u00a31,770,500 after making the final, a figure that will rise to \u00a31,850,000 if he wins.<\/p>\n
With Humphries defending the money he won from triumphing in this tournament in 2023, even if he lifts the trophy again, he will have earned \u00a31,769,000 – just short of fellow Englishman Littler.<\/p>\n
“It is has not even been two years that I’ve been on the tour and I’m already world number one,” Littler told Sky Sports.<\/p>\n
“That is job done – I am world number one – but there is a bigger match tonight.<\/p>\n
“I am the best in the world. No matter what, I’ve said it throughout the year that Luke Humphries is the best in the world.<\/p>\n
“No matter if you go out in the first, second or third round you are the best in the world.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Luke Littler will become world number one for the first time after booking his place in the Grand…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":143151,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-143150","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}