beaten in last year’s final<\/a> by Luke Humphries, added a new trophy to his cabinet just a week after lifting the Grand Slam of Darts in Wolverhampton and topping the world rankings for the first time.<\/p>\nAspinall battled hard in the decider, reducing the deficit to 9-8 at one stage by winning four out of five legs, but Littler held firm and hit a checkout of 88 to secure his sixth televised title.<\/p>\n
“I am very proud to get this one ticked off the list – only two more to go now,” Littler told ITV after the win. <\/p>\n
The only major trophies missing from Littler’s collection now are the European Championship and the World Masters. <\/p>\n
Littler averaged 103.33 to Aspinall’s 93.64 in Sunday’s final though his opponent threw seven maximum 180s – one more than ‘The Nuke’. <\/p>\n
“It wasn’t easy to get to this final at all,” Littler said. <\/p>\n
“[Aspinall] has been playing really well for a good few weeks now and I had to dig in at the end there. I am glad I got the job done.<\/p>\n
“Earlier in my career, I was just trying to be myself but now I am starting to let out a bit of my emotion. I’m looking to the big one next month.”<\/p>\n
Earlier in the day, Littler defeated Chris Dobey 10-5 in the last 16 before overcoming top seed and former world champion Gerwyn Price, of Wales, 11-8 to book his place in the final. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Aspinall had breezed into his seventh major final by beating Jermaine Wattimena of the Netherlands 11-2. <\/p>\n
“I don’t know how [Littler] has this energy,” Aspinall said. “He is incredible. What he has done for this game is incredible and I was happy to share that stage with him.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World number one Luke Littler captured his first Players Championship Finals title with a 11-8 victory over fellow…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":{"0":"post-150411","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-newzealand","10":"tag-nz","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}