{"id":489868,"date":"2026-03-22T21:13:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T21:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/489868\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T21:13:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T21:13:09","slug":"2026-belgian-darts-open-luke-littler-knocked-out-in-third-round-by-niels-zonneveld","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/489868\/","title":{"rendered":"2026 Belgian Darts Open: Luke Littler knocked out in third round by Niels Zonneveld"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">World champion Luke Littler was knocked out of the Belgian Darts Open in the third round with a 6-5 defeat by Niels Zonneveld. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Littler was on a streak of 12 matches unbeaten in the tournament and was bidding for a hat-trick of victories in Wieze, having won the event in 2024 and 2025.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But the 19-year-old Englishman suffered his first defeat in a ranking event since last October at the hands of world number 39 Zonneveld of the Netherlands.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Zonneveld had trailed 3-1 to Littler, after the opening exchanges went against the throw, before he battled back to take a 4-3 lead.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 27-year-old Dutchman missed three match darts in the 10th leg which allowed Littler to level the score with a 136 checkout.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">However, Zonneveld then produced a superb 147 finish in the final-leg decider to secure a memorable victory over the Warrington teenager.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Luke Humphries, Michael van Gerwen and Jonny Clayton were among those to progress to the quarter-finals later on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World champion Luke Littler was knocked out of the Belgian Darts Open in the third round with a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":489869,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-489868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/489869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}