{"id":811942,"date":"2026-10-24T01:28:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-24T01:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/811942\/"},"modified":"2026-10-24T01:28:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T01:28:09","slug":"european-championship-luke-littler-through-as-michael-van-gerwen-makes-early-exit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/811942\/","title":{"rendered":"European Championship: Luke Littler through as Michael van Gerwen makes early exit"},"content":{"rendered":"

World champion Luke Littler made it through to the second round of the European Championship with victory over William O’Connor – but Michael van Gerwen was knocked out at the first-round stage. <\/p>\n

Teenager Littler hit six 180s and had a three-dart average of 105 in his 6-3 victory in the best-of-11 contest – his first match since a surprise semi-final defeat<\/a> at the World Youth Championship in early October.<\/p>\n

The world number one will next play Nathan Aspinall, who beat Cristo Reyes 6-3, in Dortmund as he tries to complete the set of major trophies by winning the European Championship.<\/p>\n

“Obviously, [I’ve played] a few exhibitions, but yeah, just obviously been chilling out, practicing, and this is the one I really want,” said Littler, 19. <\/p>\n

“I’ve just got to take it one game at a time, and obviously it’s the last one missing, so I can’t be putting too much pressure on myself.<\/p>\n

“I’m just happy to get back on stage and do my job.”<\/p>\n

Van Gerwen, 37, was up against fellow Dutchman Kevin Doets and, after going 5-1 down, the three-time world champion was comprehensively beaten 6-3.<\/p>\n

The 28-year-old Doets will face Krzysztof Ratajski, who beat Dave Chisnall 6-2, in the last 16.<\/p>\n

Jonny Clayton and Josh Rock will take on each other after their respective 6-3 and 6-1 wins against Niko Springer and Chris Dobey.<\/p>\n

German Martin Schindler came through a deciding leg as he beat Wessel Nijman 6-5 to set up a match against Jermaine Wattimena, who was a 6-3 winner against England’s Ryan Joyce. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World champion Luke Littler made it through to the second round of the European Championship with victory over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":811943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[59,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-811942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-gb","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811942","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=811942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/811943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=811942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=811942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=811942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}