PDC World Championship 2024: Luke Littler beats Brendan Dolan to reach semi-fina

[ProfessorDavey]

Oh and just for completeness.

Although there is the Humphries biog piece in The Times today (as there was the Smith biog piece a year ago) this isn't the most prominent article on darts in today's Times. That would be the back page article on Littler being picked for the Premier league darts, with reference to viewing figures. The headline:

'3.71m viewers for Littler final' - weird I thought the final had two participants and the one mentioned actually lost.

I have no way of confirming this, but I doubt very much that last year Smith's biog piece would be upstaged by an article on the back page focussing on Van Gerwen, perhaps with the headline '1.7m viewers for Van Gerwen final'. Note that if I'm not mistaken last year's final also had a record audience (albeit of course now soundly thrashed by Wednesday's figures) swollen, as they were, massively with 'event' fans.

[jeremyp]

Darts is clearly a very boring sport to watch. This is a game where you have to hit a target and various regions have different amounts of points. Essentially the objective is to score exactly 301 or 501 points before the other guy, and yet they have all these complications with "sets" and "legs". You could just say "winner is the first person to get 15 games", but no, it has to be more complicated, the cynic in me says, to keep interest up.

Playing darts is another matter. I once worked with a keen darts playing amateur who had the privilege of having Eric Bristow visit his club. He said, Bristow could put a dart in any region on the board at request, pretty much 100% of the time in an exhibition context. Basically, Bristow was banging in treble 20's at will.

So, why did Bristow ever lose a darts match, you ask. It's because professional darts is all about handling pressure. It's not physically demanding, but it is mentally as tough as any sport there is, including curling.

[ProfessorDavey]

Darts is clearly a very boring sport to watch. This is a game where you have to hit a target and various regions have different amounts of points. Essentially the objective is to score exactly 301 or 501 points before the other guy, and yet they have all these complications with "sets" and "legs". You could just say "winner is the first person to get 15 games", but no, it has to be more complicated, the cynic in me says, to keep interest up.

Playing darts is another matter. I once worked with a keen darts playing amateur who had the privilege of having Eric Bristow visit his club. He said, Bristow could put a dart in any region on the board at request, pretty much 100% of the time in an exhibition context. Basically, Bristow was banging in treble 20's at will.

So, why did Bristow ever lose a darts match, you ask. It's because professional darts is all about handling pressure. It's not physically demanding, but it is mentally as tough as any sport there is, including curling.

I think it's true of every sport that the mental aspect of dealing with the pressure plays a big role, such that stuff that a player can do technically in practice is much more difficult in the real match. Sometimes that involves direct pressure from the opponent (e.g. in football, cricket, tennis etc) or indirect such as in golf or darts where pressure is applied by an opponent pulling ahead.

I did watch the match on Wednesday - I fully admit to being an 'event' fan in this case. A couple of things struck me having never really watched darts before. First how quickly they played and in particular how instantly they pivoted to a new option if their previous dart hadn't hit the mark, or blocked further access. It was basically instantaneous.

The second thing was the coverage - the camera operators seemed to pre-empt every move. So focussing down on triple 19 before the player had throw the dart. I'm still trying to work out how they were doing this - is it intense inherent knowledge (which seemed completely fail-proof) of the strategy of the player (that the previous dart means they'll be going for triple 19 next instead of triple 20). Or perhaps technology which works on the shift in eye focus position from the player. Regardless it was rather impressive.

[Nearly Sane]

I think it's true of every sport that the mental aspect of dealing with the pressure plays a big role, such that stuff that a player can do technically in practice is much more difficult in the real match. Sometimes that involves direct pressure from the opponent (e.g. in football, cricket, tennis etc) or indirect such as in golf or darts where pressure is applied by an opponent pulling ahead.

I did watch the match on Wednesday - I fully admit to being an 'event' fan in this case. A couple of things struck me having never really watched darts before. First how quickly they played and in particular how instantly they pivoted to a new option if their previous dart hadn't hit the mark, or blocked further access. It was basically instantaneous.

The second thing was the coverage - the camera operators seemed to pre-empt every move. So focussing down on triple 19 before the player had throw the dart. I'm still trying to work out how they were doing this - is it intense inherent knowledge (which seemed completely fail-proof) of the strategy of the player (that the previous dart means they'll be going for triple 19 next instead of triple 20). Or perhaps technology which works on the shift in eye focus position from the player. Regardless it was rather impressive.

https://www.sportbible.com/other/darts-world-championship-luke-littler-spotter-457407-20240103

[ProfessorDavey]

https://www.sportbible.com/other/darts-world-championship-luke-littler-spotter-457407-20240103

Interesting and really very impressive.

[Nearly Sane]

Littler continues to shine

https://www.bbc.com/sport/darts/68035347

[Nearly Sane]

And wins first ranking tournament


https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/darts/68277316

[Nearly Sane]

Wins the Premier League

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/darts/articles/c4nnpp002exo