Luke Littler overcame defending champion Luke Humphries to claim the Czech Open title in Prague.<\/p>\n
World number one Littler was playing in his first European Tour event since the Belgium Open in March, and beat Krzysztof Ratajski, Danny Noppert as well as Michael van Gerwen on his way to the blockbuster final.<\/p>\n
He was trailing 4-3 against world number two Humphries, who saw off Andrew Gilding, William O’Connor and Gerwyn Price, before a four-leg burst put the 19-year-old Littler 7-4 in front.<\/p>\n
Humphries reduced the deficit to 7-6 but failed to level the match as he missed with two darts at double 16 in the 14th leg.<\/p>\n
Littler capitalised by taking out 39 for a win which secures his place at the European Championship in Dortmund in October.<\/p>\n
“This is what the fans are in for – me and Luke are back,” said Littler.<\/p>\n
“The two best going at it in a final once again. I’m glad I’ve won.<\/p>\n
“It’s good to be back and I’m back with a bang.<\/p>\n
“These long days are worth it, especially lifting the trophy.”<\/p>\n
Littler, who is attempting to complete the calendar sweep of ranking events in 2026, added: “I think I’ve secured my place in Dortmund – Dortmund is the one I’m chasing.”<\/p>\n
Humphries was aiming to win the Czech Open for a fourth time and third occasion on the trot.<\/p>\n
“I was going to pull out Thursday, and I made the final, so I can’t be too upset with myself because I did really well,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I never give up, especially in finals. I know that Luke is obviously going to throw everything at me.<\/p>\n
“Hopefully over the next four months, I push him. If he does the clean sweep, he has to do it the hard way.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Luke Littler overcame defending champion Luke Humphries to claim the Czech Open title in Prague. World number one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":616722,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-616721","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\/616721","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=616721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}