{"id":253599,"date":"2026-01-20T03:42:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T03:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/253599\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T03:42:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T03:42:07","slug":"littler-to-face-van-veen-in-first-clash-since-pdc-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/253599\/","title":{"rendered":"Littler to face Van Veen in first clash since PDC final"},"content":{"rendered":"

Luke Littler will face Gian van Veen in a rematch of their PDC World Championship final after the pair breezed into the quarter-finals of the inaugural Saudi Arabia Masters.<\/p>\n

Littler, who turns 19 on Wednesday, was pitted against the evergreen 71-year-old Paul Lim for the second week in a row and, having beaten him 6-1 in Bahrain<\/a>, the teenager repeated the dose in Riyadh.<\/p>\n

The two-time world champion raced out of the traps with back-to-back 14-dart legs and did not have to be at his best to see off Lim, who claimed the fifth leg with a 96 checkout to stave off a whitewash.<\/p>\n

An average of 89.33 without a single 180 was still enough for Littler, who will next take on Van Veen after thrashing the Dutchman two weeks ago 7-1 at Alexandra Palace<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“I definitely felt good up there and I can’t wait to be back tomorrow,” Littler told ITV4 on Monday evening.<\/p>\n

“It would mean everything (to win this title). There can only be one winner and hopefully I can win it tomorrow.”<\/p>\n

\"Danny
\nDanny Noppert (r) lost 6-3 to Hong Kong’s Man Lok Leung<\/p>\n

Van Veen has had a breakout past few months, including winning the European Championship in October before reaching the World Championship showpiece, beating Luke Humphries and Gary Anderson en route.<\/p>\n

On the prospect of facing Littler again, Van Veen said after brushing aside Japan\u2019s Motomu Sakai 6-2: “I\u2019m really looking forward to tomorrow but I\u2019m first going to enjoy this win and then tomorrow, hopefully revenge.”<\/p>\n

Gerwyn Price whitewashed Alexis Toylo to set up a showdown against Humphries, who was similarly untroubled in a 6-2 victory over Ryusei Azemoto.<\/p>\n

Michael van Gerwen, Stephen Bunting and Nathan Aspinall all recorded 6-1 wins over unheralded opponents, with Danny Noppert the only major casualty following a 6-3 defeat by Hong Kong\u2019s Man Lok Leung.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Luke Littler will face Gian van Veen in a rematch of their PDC World Championship final after the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253600,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-253599","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253599","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=253599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}