“If he had hit that 112 finish, he would have led Luke Humphries 5-2" - Raymond van Barneveld believes Luke Littler came within width of a wire from taking World Championship title

In a battle of the generations at the recent World Darts Championship, Raymond van Barneveld's hopes of a sixth world title were ended at the hands of Luke Littler.

The 56-year-old Van Barneveld went down 4-1 to the then 16-year-old Littler. "I’ve got unbelievable admiration for him. He’s now 17, he was 16 and I’m thinking we all know he could play well. But he took the world by storm. Unbelievable," Van Barneveld said in quotes collected by Oche180 recently. “He talks to the press, all the people on social media, everyone has comments about him. Good ones or bad ones and he still managed to play his awesome game. We are going to hear a lot from Luke Littler. This young man wins the Bahrain Masters, try to stop him.”

Reflecting on the recent World Darts Championship, van Barneveld thinks Littler could easily have won the title if one dart had ended up on the other side of the wire. “If he had hit that 112 finish, he would have led Luke Humphries 5-2 in the final. Probably Luke Humphries would have been gone then," the legendary Dutchman explains.

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“If you look at the first two sets he was hitting 15, 11, 12 dart legs. You can’t beat that, you have to hit nine-darters on his throw and that’s impossible.”