Luke Littler bested Ryan Meikle to advance in the second round of the Paddy Power PDC World Darts Championship.
As a seeded player, the 17-year-old darts sensation joined the tournament in round two, making his first appearance at Alexandra Palace this Christmas against Meikle, aka ‘The Barber’, on Saturday night. He received a warm welcome from the Ally Pally faithful as his entrance music, Greenlight by Pitbull featuring Flo Rida and LunchMoney Lewis rang out.
Meikle, 28, from Ipswich, earned the right to face Littler by defeating Fallon Sherrock earlier this week. But he has never made it past the second round of the World Darts Championship and wasn’t expected to prove too much of a test for Littler.
However, that didn’t prove to be the case as ‘The Nuke’ didn’t find it easy to dispatch his opponent, who made a bright start and played very well in the first set, but missed some golden opportunities, as Littler clinched it 3-2.
Meikle, a hairdresser by trade hence his nickname, levelled the tie at 1-1, when he took the second set 3-1, as suddenly Littler had a match on his hands. But he responded in fine fashion after the break.
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Littler clinched the third set 3-1 and came close to a nine-darter, only to narrowly miss out on the feat. However, he then went for it again and came agonisingly close. Notching up an 101 average, it was a simply sensational final set from Littler.
The Runcorn-born star thrilled with his run to the final of the tournament last December, only to fall at the final hurdle against rival Luke Humphries in January. But he has since won the Premier League, World Series of Darts Finals and Grand Slam of Darts.
Littler is currently ranked fourth in the world, behind only third-ranked Michael van Gerwen, Michael Smith in second – who was knocked out of the World Championship earlier this week in a shocking upset – and the world’s no.1 ranked Humphries.
Earlier in the evening, Ryan Joyce stunned number 13 seed Danny Noppert with a 3-1 victory to knock him out of the contest. But that wasn’t the biggest upset of the night, as five-time world champion Raymond Van Barneveld crashed out too thanks to a 3-1 defeat at the hands of world no.76 Nick Kenny.