{"id":335790,"date":"2026-03-08T19:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T19:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/335790\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T19:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T19:24:09","slug":"uk-open-darts-2026-luke-littler-beats-danny-noppert-to-reach-semi-finals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/335790\/","title":{"rendered":"UK Open Darts 2026: Luke Littler beats Danny Noppert to reach semi-finals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Defending champion Luke Littler beat 2022 winner Danny Noppert to reach the semi-finals of the UK Open in Minehead.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The two-time world champion and world number one, 19, trailed Dutchman Noppert 3-0 at the start of their best-of-19-legs quarter-final.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But Littler reeled off three straight legs in reply, led for the first time at 6-5 and eventually won 10-6 to reach the last four.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He went seven perfect darts into a potential nine-darter in the 15th leg, but then missed his attempt at treble 17.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Littler is aiming to become the first player to win back-to-back UK Open titles since Michael van Gerwen did so in 2015 and 2016.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The semi-finals and final will be played from 19:00 GMT, with a \u00a3120,000 first prize going to the tournament winner.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Littler will play Northern Ireland&#8217;s Josh Rock for a place in the final, while James Wade will take on Gerwyn Price in the other semi-final.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Defending champion Luke Littler beat 2022 winner Danny Noppert to reach the semi-finals of the UK Open in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":335791,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-335790","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\/335790","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=335790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}