Littler\u2019s hopes of claiming a third straight Premier League win ended prematurely with a 6-5 quarter-final loss to Van Veen on home soil at the AO Arena.<\/p>\n
But the headlines centred around a fiery ending to the contest, when Littler took exception to Van Veen turning towards the crowd as the Dutchman tried to clinch a notable victory, only to fluff his lines going for double 15.<\/p>\n
Littler gestured angrily at his opponent and geed up the crowd but blew his own chance of winning.<\/p>\n
Littler then mimicked crying towards Van Veen, who took out double six to bring the contest to a close.<\/p>\n
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The pair exchanged a brief handshake, but Van Veen was unhappy with the world number one, telling Sky Sports: \u201cI missed the double 15 and I looked around, and I was fuming with myself that I missed, and I looked around and he was celebrating that I missed. That was out of order. I was fuming about that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love Luke to bits, he\u2019s a fantastic player and guy for the sport and to see all the attention he\u2019s brought to it is phenomenal, but this is also part of it as well and today was my day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Littler took to Instagram in response, posting quotes from Van Veen accompanied by three crying-with-laughter emojis.<\/p>\n
After a slow start to the season, Littler had surged to the top of the standings with back-to-back victories in Dublin and Berlin.<\/p>\n
Van Veen had not won a match since week four of the competition and is still recovering from the kidney stones that forced him to sit out Dublin.<\/p>\n
But he served notice of his intent with a bullseye to seal a 128 checkout for a break of throw in the third leg and just missed a double five that would have opened up a 5-1 lead.<\/p>\n
Littler, who hails from nearby Warrington and is a big Manchester United fan, recovered to 4-3 and it appeared Van Veen\u2019s chance might have gone when he failed to land a double for the match at 5-3.<\/p>\n
Back came the world champion to level, but for once he could not find the answers when it came to the crunch.<\/p>\n
Van Veen put the confrontation behind him with another excellent performance to beat Josh Rock 6-3 in the semi-finals but lost out to an inspired Gerwyn Price 6-2 in the final.<\/p>\n
The Welshman had previously beaten Luke Humphries and Stephen Bunting by the same scoreline and is up to second in the table, two points behind Littler.<\/p>\n
Price imitated Littler\u2019s fishing celebration when he took out a 170 checkout in the third leg against Bunting and he said afterwards: \u201cJust a bit of fun, nothing too out of order I don\u2019t think.\u201d<\/p>\n
Price had sympathy for Littler regarding his reaction to Van Veen, saying: \u201cThings like this happen in darts. I\u2019m sure in a couple of weeks it\u2019ll be done and dusted.<\/p>\n
\u201cEmotions are up and down and people get hyped up. I\u2019ve been there, the backlash off it. Probably Luke will have a little bit of it. I feel for the kid at the minute.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve won tonight, that\u2019s all I\u2019m bothered about. Five points, \u00a310,000 in the bank and I\u2019m up to number two above Jonny (Clayton), so I\u2019m happy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Littler\u2019s hopes of claiming a third straight Premier League win ended prematurely with a 6-5 quarter-final loss to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379686,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-379685","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\/379685","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=379685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}