It was the response to a question about Emma Raducanu that made me laugh most. I’m spooling back to February and a chat with the prince before he became king, when the subject of pressure on young shoulders felt like a natural line of enquiry. From there, the path to Raducanu seemed obvious.
But here’s the thing about conversations with Luke Littler. He goes from zero to 180 in around four seconds at the oche, thud-thud-thud, and in a similar amount of time he might burn through two answers at a microphone.
It’s not rudeness, it’s just him. He keeps it brief because words to Littler are like an opportunity at double 10 – rarely wasted. And so we got to Raducanu far quicker than expected and left it even faster.
How, I asked, did he feel about a few of those comparisons that were being made? A bit predictable, sure, but Raducanu was 18 when she won the US Open and he had been 16 when he came from even further out of left-field to reach the final of the World Championships a month before our interview. The point I was grappling towards concerned the burden of new expectations, when strangers know your name, but what a foolish use of breath that proved to be. For a few reasons, actually.
‘Hey?’ he said, and it was the confusion in his expression that caught me. So I tried again.
‘I’ve not really looked into anything like that,’ he added, and still that bemused look was on his face. He seemed to get the question but not the context, so the follow-up was to ask if he was actually familiar with Raducanu’s story at all.
Luke Littler, 17, is from a different mould, a genius who knows what he needs to know
There are obvious similarities between Emma Raducanu’s story and that of the darts sensation
With a shrug, Britain’s most famous child finally answered: ‘Not really.’
I loved that. He was a vision of blissful indifference to the outside world, this boy of wonder who slept through the mornings and described his routine as hours of video games and 25-30 minutes of practise before hitting the hay all over again at 2am.
This being the boy who had been invited to watch Manchester United train and walked off when it started raining. This being the boy who met Sir Alex Ferguson on a separate engagement but deadpanned to me how his Glaswegian accent was just too thick for him to pick up any wisdom. Not that he appeared fussed either way, which I loved almost as much as his obliviousness to Raducanu – it was his sheer lack of pretence.
No, he’s from a different mould, this kid. He knows what he needs to know, which means knowing that when he throws a 23-gram arrow, it tends to go where he wants. Thud-thud-thud, win-win-win, tap-tap-tap on the video console. And what else is there is to worry about?
Genius can package itself in many different ways in our favourite games, and I tend to think of Roger Federer and Ronnie O’Sullivan in these discussions. But it is rare to find anything as mystifyingly brilliant as Littler when he takes aim at a board. It is sporting genius in its truest form, at once so obvious and indecipherable.
To watch him become world champion at the age of 17 on Friday, to see him break Michael van Gerwen’s spirit and then his record as the youngest winner by a full seven years, was to witness that unique strand of genius at play.
It’s a strand he found himself unable to explain in any detail when we spoke about it, because that’s way some of them roll – a gift can be ridden, but not always understood. A gift can be nurtured and fed ravenously through repetition, but shouldn’t be questioned excessively by the holder. To do so might kill the magic, like the golfer who chases a perfect swing and loses what worked.
But Littler isn’t that guy. He is the teenager who won 10 titles between January and November last year, in his debut season, and then went to Alexandra Palace and took away the self-belief, the sporting soul, of a three-time champion in Van Gerwen.
Littler broke Michael van Gerwen’s spirit in a one-sided final at Alexandra Palace on Friday
The Dutch three-time world champion simply had no answer to Littler’s sensational display
At the point of greatest resistance, when Van Gerwen finally hit form in the fifth set to go from 4-0 to 4-1, Littler had the throw in the sixth and opened each of his three legs with a 180. When Van Gerwen nudged at him again, threatening a break at the start of the seventh, Littler checked out from 124, pinning the bull. Their averages were often similar; Littler’s ability to stick the doubles, to do the bits that mattered, when they mattered most, was on another plain, as they had been throughout the tournament.
Being able to do that, to impose your will on circumstances, to make those quick gear changes, is what sets the best apart in sport and it is almost impossible to comprehend in someone so young.
But maybe it is Littler’s youth that makes such genius accessible. It is the lack of scar tissue, the dearth of negative experiences that might raise hard questions internally. Again, O’Sullivan comes to mind, but more in the context of what he fears he has lost with time.
My memory goes back two years to a conversation we had while watching a video of him on his televised debut at 14. The bloke was nearly moved to tears, saying how he wished he ‘could be that kid again’, because it was all so instinctive in those days. So free. So innate and natural, rather like it looks with Littler now. If he had never fiddled with his cue action, if he never sought to dissect his gift in a pursuit of understanding his genius, O’Sullivan reckons he would have won 12 world titles instead of seven.
I tend to doubt that, because it is inevitable that the effects of pressure increase with age and experience.
We saw that in Littler himself across the past three weeks – the unflappable, inscrutable child of 2024 cried after his first round, having suddenly felt some weight on his shoulders. He felt a little more in the final set against Van Gerwen, and of course he did, because he’s human.
But he is a giant in his highly unusual way, this boy genius who beat all the men.
Let’s hope it is a good while before he thinks too hard about any of it and just keeps thud-thud-thudding away, not giving excessive thought to Raducanu. Or Ferguson. Or why any of it seems so magnificently easy.
Littler – not 18 until January 21 – was mystifyingly brilliant in his win over Van Gerwen
The 17-year-old star does not say much and is a vision of blissful indifference to the outside world
Littler’s task is to ensure he retains the attitude which has seen him rise to the top of the sport
Delay in knighting Sinfield is a disgrace
Of all the vagaries around the honours system, few cases are quite so jarring in the sporting context as the delay in knighting Kevin Sinfield. He’ll jog his way to that status eventually, but for now he is paused on the CBE he received at the end of 2023 for the apparent reason that they cannot be upgraded within three years.
And doesn’t that just feel awfully inadequate in light of what this man has come to represent? Some sporting figures make those lists for winning and others for losing well. Sinfield? He is the kind of guy who, above anything he did on a rugby field, makes you want to be a better person. Over and again, every step of his hard runs, he embodies the value of putting others first.
I’m inclined to share the view of Geoff Burrow, father of Sinfield’s late, great friend Rob: never mind what the rules say, the snub is disgraceful.
Salah isn’t being smart in pursuit of new deal
With each passing week, Mo Salah’s feet provide compelling new reasons for Liverpool to stump up the money needed to satisfy him. It’s just a shame that he is almost as prolific with his mouth these days. Once so media shy, he has taken to flogging his grievance with the pace of those contract talks on a near-weekly basis. By now, we get it and so do the club, and his words are achieving little beyond the sense he is unwilling to even approach the middle in any negotiations. If Liverpool are smart they’ll pay up, but if we are to say the same about Salah, he might need to lower the gun for a day or two.
