World number one Luke Littler threw a thrilling nine-darter as he booked his place in the quarter-finals of the World Matchplay with a 11-8 win over Nathan Aspinall. <\/p>\n
Littler began the contest at Winter Gardens in Blackpool in sensational fashion with a perfect leg, finishing on double 15.<\/p>\n
The Warrington teenager cupped his ears to lap up the adulation of a delirious crowd while fellow Englishman Aspinall laughed in disbelief before he gave Littler a high five.<\/p>\n
Excitement levels were raised further in the fourth leg when Littler had double 15 remaining for a second nine-darter, only for his arrow to land just the wrong side of the wire.<\/p>\n
Aspinall turned to the crowd and jokingly offered up his darts to see if anyone else wanted to give the 19-year-old a game. <\/p>\n
He refused to allow Littler to pull away, though, and managed to haul himself back on terms at 7-7 only for the defending champion to reel off the next three legs.<\/p>\n
Aspinall briefly rallied again but when he missed tops in the 19th leg, Littler was able to checkout 52 as he sealed victory with an incredible 113.68 average – the second highest in the tournament’s history – featuring a total of 14 180s.<\/p>\n
“The nine-darter just happened. These guys [the crowd] were booing me at the beginning and then they started cheering me on!” Littler told Sky Sports.<\/p>\n
“It felt amazing and that was probably the best game Nathan and I have played against each other – it’s never over against Nathan because he never gives up.<\/p>\n
“That’s two unbelievable performances from myself here. Hopefully I can pick up the title again, but I just have to focus on who I play next.”<\/p>\n
Littler will face Josh Rock, who impressed in a 11-6 victory over Stephen Bunting. The pair met in last year’s Matchplay semi-final.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, Michael van Gerwen’s campaign ended as he suffered a 14-12 defeat to fellow Dutchman Dirk van Duijvenbode. <\/p>\n
Van Gerwen had battled back from 8-4 down to level the match at 10-all but Van Duijvenbode closed out the contest.<\/p>\n
Scotland’s Gary Anderson also progressed to the last eight with an 11-7 win over Welshman Jonny Clayton.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World number one Luke Littler threw a thrilling nine-darter as he booked his place in the quarter-finals of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":561568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-561567","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\/561567","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=561567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/561568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=561567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=561567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=561567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}