Littler has averaged more than 109 in all four matches in this year’s tournament as he looks to join Taylor and Michael van Gerwen as the only back-to-back winners of the Matchplay.<\/p>\n
The run is also continuing his sublime form in longer-format matches – this win extending the streak to 28 successive wins in games with 20 or more legs. <\/p>\n
His last defeat over a match of that duration was when he burst on to the scene in the 2024 World Championship and lost to Luke Humphries in the final.<\/p>\n
That gives an indication of the challenge that Price will face on Sunday in his second Matchplay final. <\/p>\n
The pair have a bit of rivalry with Price’s on-stage roars and antics often provoking Littler into doing similar, but the teenager denied that Price can get “under his skin”.<\/p>\n
Earlier in the week, Price said that some players can “make it too easy” for Littler. <\/p>\n
Despite their battles, Littler has won the past nine encounters between the pair, with Price’s last success in their opening meeting of 2026. <\/p>\n
The Welshman has never beat Littler in a game that has contained more than 15 legs so will have to reach new heights in the best-of-35 final. <\/p>\n
Speaking to Sky Sports, Littler said: “Me and Gez always have great games. Gez will want to try and get me into a roaring battle. As long as I can get into the lead that will be the thing.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Littler has averaged more than 109 in all four matches in this year’s tournament as he looks to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544038,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-544037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544037","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=544037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}