Tearful Luke Littler beat great rival Luke Humphries in a final-leg decider to regain his Premier League crown and pocket a \u00a3350,000 (\u20ac404,000) jackpot.<\/p>\n
World number one Littler was subjected to more pantomime booing and whistling from the 16,000 crowd at London’s O2 Arena.<\/p>\n
But the 19-year-old shrugged off the jeers which have followed him around recently to reclaim the title he lost to Humphries in last year\u2019s final.<\/p>\n
It was the third straight meeting between darts\u2019 top pair in the final, and it was Warrington thrower Littler who came from 6-3 down to edge a thriller 11-10.<\/p>\n
Add in his record-equalling six nightly wins over the 17-week marathon and Littler has raked in an eye-watering \u00a3410,000 (\u20ac473,000).<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s been a rollercoaster,” he said. “The first four weeks I was bottom of the table. I had to pick myself up, had some tough times.”<\/p>\n
The youngster then had to stop speaking as welled up with emotion, and Humphries explained: “It shows what it means to us as players, on the road for 16, 17 weeks, it\u2019s hard work.”<\/p>\n
Littler had earlier squandered six match darts as he let a 9-4 lead slip in a bad-tempered semi-final against Gerwyn Price.<\/p>\n
There was a flashpoint midway through the 15th leg when Price, not on a finish, scored 170 and gave the crowd the reeling in the ‘big fish\u2019 gesture with Littler already throwing.<\/p>\n
Referee Huw Ware gave Price a ticking-off at the end of the leg before the fired-up Welshman apologised to Littler.<\/p>\n
However, the 41-year-old repeated the gesture at his very next visit after hitting 180, although this time he was well out of his opponent\u2019s eyeline.<\/p>\n
Price carried on reeling in Littler, but \u2018The Nuke\u2019 held his nerve to take the deciding leg for a 10-9 victory, his ninth consecutive win against the former rugby player.<\/p>\n
Humphries, 31, had seen off 2021 winner Jonny Clayton 10-9 in s see-saw second semi-final.<\/p>\n
\u2018Cool-Hand\u2019 led 6-2, only for Clayton to find the form which earned him four nightly wins and roar 9-7 ahead.<\/p>\n
Humphries levelled the match at 9-9 with a 121 check-out, and then missed a match dart at bull.<\/p>\n
But as Clayton threw for double 16 to win, he appeared to be put off by a whistle from the crowd allowing Humphries to step up and finish the job.<\/p>\n
The Welsh number one was clearly annoyed as he gestured towards the crowd before walking offstage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tearful Luke Littler beat great rival Luke Humphries in a final-leg decider to regain his Premier League crown…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472117,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-472116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472116","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=472116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}