World Champion Luke Littler Crashes Out of the World Grand Prix as Veteran Luke Woodhouse Pleads: ‘Luke’s Not a Robot’

The strangest thing about Luke Littler’s exit from the World Grand Prix was not the scoreline. It was who stepped in to protect him afterwards. The man who had just ended his title defence came off the stage in Leicester and spent his big moment asking the darts public to go easy on the teenager he had beaten.

That tells you where Littler is right now. For most of this year he has been the fixed point of the sport, the player every draw bends around, the one the crowds pay to see and, lately, to jeer. The results have started to fray at the edges, and the double-in, double-out format, which punishes any hesitation at the start and the finish of every leg, caught him on a night when the answers would not come.

The opening looked like the usual script. Littler, the defending champion and world number one, took the first set, closing it out with a 106 checkout on double 15, while Luke Woodhouse let chances at double slip away. Then the match turned. Woodhouse levelled, took the decider 3-1 in legs and finished it with a 75 checkout. The averages show how ragged the night was: Woodhouse 82.51, Littler 82.41. BBC Sport judged the teenager distinctly below par throughout.

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Woodhouse did not pretend it was a masterpiece. “It’s the first time I’ve played him on a main stage, and safe to say I was shaking a little bit,” he told Darts World. “I think it was a scrappy game. Of course, I’ll take the win.” “I thought I sort of threw it away the first set,” he admitted to DartsNews, adding that he sensed Littler “wasn’t flying on all gears.” His instruction to himself was simple: “Don’t, please don’t go out and lose two sets when he’s not playing well.”

This defeat did not arrive out of nowhere. Just over a week earlier, at the World Series of Darts Finals in Amsterdam, Littler’s bid to become the first player to win every major televised title in a single calendar year ended in the quarter-finals. He had taken the first five of the season; Jonny Clayton beat him 10-4, and only four of his 20 darts at double found their target. The whole weekend was hostile. Sections of the Dutch crowd booed and whistled him, and DartsNews reported that he cupped his ears at them and, after one missed double, turned and applauded them sarcastically.

Then he said something a world champion rarely says out loud. “I just want to play my darts, obviously sign autographs,” he told reporters, according to ESPN. “The past two nights, I’ve done nothing, I’ve just walked off stage without thanking anybody.” He threatened to skip European Tour events in the Netherlands if the crowds stayed that way.

Read against Amsterdam, his answer to Leicester is the revealing part. No complaint about the crowd, no excuse, no threat. On Instagram he wrote: “Well played @lukewoodly180 was a good game, good one to be apart of aswell. Both hit, both missed but Luke took his chance and nice week off now, all the best to Luke for rest of tournament.” A second post was pure teenager: “May aswell get myself to OT (Old Trafford) now I’m out. LETS GO THE WIRE.” That is a salute to Warrington Wolves, his rugby league team, who play in the Super League Grand Final on Saturday, a date that would have clashed with the tournament’s semi-finals.

Whether that tone is relief or resilience, only Littler knows. What is on the record is a 19-year-old who, one week after walking off stages without thanking anybody, lost a match he was expected to win and answered with good grace and a joke about the week off. In a sport that has spent the autumn testing his temper, that may be the most important thing he did in Leicester.

Woodhouse, a 37-year-old from Bewdley who won two ranking titles earlier this year, carried the rest of the message himself. “Luke’s not a robot. He’s going to have days and weeks and whatever where he’s not right on it,” he said, as quoted by Sky Sports. “But look I think people have echoed it and I’m going to say it again, he’s one of a kind Luke. I hope people will take the time to appreciate how good he is and not give him a hard time. You might not see another Luke Littler ever again.”

The winner has his own business to finish. “I’m here to win tournaments,” Woodhouse said, and he meets Nathan Aspinall, the 2022 runner-up, in the last 16. Littler was not the only big name to fall on Monday night: Michael van Gerwen also went out, beaten in a deciding set by Ryan Joyce.

As for the world number one, on Saturday he plans to be in the crowd at Old Trafford, for once the one doing the shouting.

Tags: darts, Luke Littler, Jonny Clayton, Luke Woodhouse, World Grand Prix

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