Luke Littler, an ordinary looking teenager wearing a grey hoodie and joggers, has spent the morning at Manchester United’s training ground and then played darts with Christian Eriksen and Harry Maguire. Like millions of others, the footballers had been floored in recent weeks by Littler’s extraordinary ability to throw darts and hold his nerve in testing psychological battles as, aged 16, he reached the world championship final on his debut.
I like the fact that Littler, an ardent United fan, seems unimpressed by Eriksen’s and Maguire’s darting skills. They are good men but look distinctly average with the arrows to a kid who routinely produces darts wizardry. He is now back home in Warrington, having turned 17 last Sunday, and Littler pauses when I ask him to describe the best moment of his life-changing month.
“Probably going to Bahrain last week and winning that tournament with not even 10 minutes of practice,” Littler says. He began an unforgettable evening with a brilliant nine-dart finish in the opening leg against Nathan Aspinall before beating two former world champions in Gerwyn Price and Michael van Gerwen to win the Bahrain Masters and his first PDC tournament. Asked by an incredulous interviewer on ITV4 to explain what he had done, Littler reacted typically: “You tell me. I don’t know. I’m happy to win.”
Littler shrugs now. “You put on a show. People could have said the worlds was a one-off but it certainly isn’t because I won my first World Series [tournament] and my first attempt at ticking things off the bucket list is done. I’d now like to win any major this year.”
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He looks bemused that some of the world’s best players arrived three hours before the start so they could practise and prepare methodically in Bahrain. It is very different in Littler’s world. He turned up shortly before play, sat down with his phone, drank a Diet Coke, threw a few darts and returned to his phone. It echoed the way he played Football Manager on his phone 20 minutes before scorching through his World Championship semi-final against Rob Cross.
“No one believed me when I said I’d not thrown a dart since the world final,” Littler says. It takes Dave Allen, the PDC’s amiable head of media for 20 years, to provide a wider context. Allen, who joins us alongside Eloise Milburn, Littler’s girlfriend, explains how he has “never seen anything like it” amid the explosion of interest in darts and that he and the players reacted with astonishment to Littler’s “incredible” nine-darter. “In the first leg,” Littler reiterates. “It’s just what I do. I hit a nine-darter in Gibraltar in 2021 when I was 14.”
He laughs when I suggest that Aspinall looked almost as thrilled as Littler at his Bahrain nine-darter. “I think he was but he said: ‘It’s only the first leg.’ Some of the players are happy for me and the way darts has changed. Obviously me against Luke Humphries was the most watched world final on Sky Sports ever at 4.3 million [and the most viewers for Sky, outside football, outstripping the Ashes and Ryder Cup] and it was good seeing so many kids and older people across the world buying dartboards.”
Just as he demolished his idol Raymond van Barneveld in the worlds, Littler refused to be overawed as he eased away from Van Gerwen to beat the world No 2 8-5 in the Bahrain final. “There was nothing to talk to myself about before playing Michael for the first time,” Littler says when I ask if he had to steel himself mentally against a darts great. “You’ve got to think you’re going to beat whoever’s in front of you.”
Van Gerwen praised Littler but also said: “We all want to push him but let him grow, let him do other things.” Littler nods. “It was good to hear what Michael said but I just get on with whatever’s in front of me.”
Almost his entire life has been consumed by darts and Littler grins when I say it was surreal to see footage of him playing the game in nappies when he was 18 months old. “I told everyone I was actually in nappies when I started playing. I’m not sure they believed me but they found it and created a video, which was good.”
Fame has engulfed Littler. We meet at the Village Hotel in Warrington and the staff are agog. Having had prior warning that he would spend a chunk of this afternoon at the hotel they have made him a birthday cake which, soon after our interview, they present to Littler. It also seems striking when I ask him how he, Eloise and his family celebrated his 17th birthday.
“We went for a Chinese in St Helens and I only got spotted by three people, so that was good. They clocked me but waited until we’d finished and got a picture, so that was all right. It’s calmed down since the worlds. That was crazy. The press were on me until we escaped to a house on a hill in the middle of nowhere in Wales. They’ve not been around so much since then but it’s one of those things with planeloads of fame and planeloads of followers. It’s certainly changed my life.”
What is the worst thing about fame? “Probably dealing with interviews.” Littler laughs and waves away my apology – even if this might be the longest interview he has endured. “Lots of people want to talk to me.”
Littler’s fame is now at the level of a footballer and he has got used to fabricated stories about himself. He dismisses the talk of him going out for a kebab every night of the worlds.
He looks confused when I ask if he knows much about Emma Raducanu. “No,” Littler says in a way which makes it clear he has never heard of her. I explain that Raducanu, aged 18, became the first tennis player in history to win a grand slam tournament as a qualifier. Littler still looks baffled when I add that the US Open, which Raducanu won in 2021, is arguably the most prestigious tournament after Wimbledon.
“She is tennis’ equivalent of you, mate,” Allen says gently. Milburn says to Littler: “Didn’t she reach out to you?” Littler is nonplussed again and so I tell him how Raducanu had been asked about him at a press conference in Australia and she advised him to “keep your circle close” and “take time to enjoy it”. It seemed sage advice from a 21-year-old whose difficult last two years are a warning that life rarely treats unexpected prodigies kindly for long.
“That’s what I knew from the very start,” Littler says, before looking at Milburn. “We knew people would find out [about their relationship] but it started off very bad. As the weeks go on [the abuse of Milburn on social media] has been almost forgotten. We’ve been talking for a few months now. I’ve brung her along to the worlds, got to the final and whatever people say, they can say it. It’s not going to affect me or my mental strength. I’ve got guys doing my Instagram now and they delete it before I see it.”
It is harder for Milburn as people have vilified her because, at 21, she is older than Littler. “It was tough to start with,” she says quietly. “The first day I let it get to me a lot. But you learn that as long as the pair of you are happy, that’s all that matters. The people that matter most are supportive of us.”
Is it true that they met while playing Fifa? “No!” Littler says while Milburn, who has played county darts for Surrey, laughs. “That was a weird story they made up. We met on the development tour in Leicester in August but became friends at the last [tournament] in Milton Keynes.”
The intensity of competition in the upcoming Premier League – which features the world’s leading seven players and Littler (currently No 31) – will be draining. After losing to Littler, Van Gerwen warned: “I’ll get him, don’t worry.” Littler says: “I know everyone wants to beat me now. And I want to beat them. It’s my first year as a professional and I want to do as much as I can.”
If he is to fulfil his aim of winning a major this year Littler faces an exacting task. The only major tournaments in which he is guaranteed a place are the UK Open and World Championship. He has to qualify for the World Matchplay, the World Grand Prix and the European Championships.
Were there nights during the world championship where he lay in the dark trying to absorb his dizzying rise? “Every night. I was awake until five every morning, on my phone, refreshing Instagram, seeing my followers go up. Before my first round against Christian Kist I had 4,000 followers and it went crazy. I’m the most followed darts player on Instagram with 1.1 million now.”
Did he rewatch every game late at night during the worlds? “Yeah, every one apart from the final. As soon as that double 2 was missed I didn’t need to see anything else.”
If Littler had nailed that double 2 he would have taken a 5-2 lead and needed just two more sets to become world champion. Instead he lost 7-4 to the impressive Humphries. “I got over it straight away,” Littler insists. “Getting to the final was a bonus because I just wanted to win one game. You’ve just got to come back stronger. That’s what I did in Bahrain.”
Did he cry as a young boy after a loss? “Oh yeah, especially at local grand slams. I remember a severe one in Widnes where the winner got 500 quid. I lost in the final and I was around 12.” How old were most of his opponents? “They were all pretty old men. Thirty, 40, 50.”
Littler was humbled this month when he met 82-year-old Sir Alex Ferguson after Manchester United invited him to their game against Spurs. “It was crazy. He signed a top for me and I was told he wants to meet me.” Was Luke the Nuke nervous? “Yeah!” he exclaims. “I was a United fan for the last two years of his career [Ferguson retired in 2013]. It was like a dream come true for me but bigger for my dad as he saw [United’s treble in] 1999 and everything else. I got to speak to Sir Alex and he told me to stay grounded.”
That humility had been evident when Arsenal’s Declan Rice and Aaron Ramsdale were staying in the same hotel as the darts players last month. Littler remembers that “a security guard told me: ‘They want a picture with you.’ I was like: ‘Shouldn’t it be the other way round?’”
A month on he can be more blase when officiating a game between Eriksen and Maguire. He makes an amusing face when I ask about the standard, and which of the two players is better at darts. “Christian. He won.” Was Eriksen decent? “I’d say fluky.” Allen tells me later that, when playing for a few minutes against Maguire, Littler needed only three darts, and a perfect 180, to beat the score the United defender reached with nine.
Littler’s fame is now at the level of a footballer and he has got used to fabricated stories about himself. He dismisses the talk of him going out for a kebab every night of the worlds. “I had a kebab after my first win and didn’t have another in two weeks.”
But Littler’s favourite takeaway, Hot Spot in Warrington, is booming. “That’s my mate’s place and they’ve now got the Luke Wrap under my name. I walked in yesterday and got a burger and chips. They showed me two orders for my wraps and they’ve now got to replace the big doner meat every three days. They’ve also got a barber’s shop, Hamidos, so they give me free haircuts now.”
Littler is impressively balanced as a teenage sporting sensation. He acknowledges calmly that “the more I win, the more popular I’m going to become” while suggesting that “when I was younger I didn’t like losing. But now I’m grown up I know what it is to lose, especially in a world championship final.”
Most of all he knows that “I’m just going to take everything in my stride ... I’ve got myself in a really good place”. – Guardian
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