"A few years back we also thought Michael would never drop off": Wessel Nijman believes Luke Littler won’t remain untouchable

Wessel Nijman has briefly put his darts down after a remarkably successful first part of the season. The Dutchman captured no fewer than eight titles in the first half of the year, firmly confirming his status as one of the players climbing fastest toward the absolute world elite. Still, Nijman remains grounded. He currently calls a potential Premier League appearance mainly a dream, while he has one clear ambition for the autumn: to make deep runs at the big televised tournaments.

In the podcast Darts Draait Door by Vincent van der Voort and Damian Vlottes, Nijman looked back in detail on his first half of the season. After months in which one tournament followed another, he decided to step away from darts completely for a while.

“Last week I didn’t touch my darts all week,” Nijman says. “I just sat in the garden a bit and walked around.”

According to Van der Voort, such a period without darts can only be positive. “Just take a bit of distance. Of course it’s week in, week out throwing. Then you’ll also fancy it more when it starts again. You can’t keep going. It’s simply too much.”

A new vacation isn’t on Nijman’s schedule this summer. During the World Cup of Darts he already went to Greece with his girlfriend. “My girlfriend had just started a new job, so we chose not to go away again now.”

That did leave time for another big hobby of Nijman’s: AZ. He is a fervent supporter of the Alkmaar club and attended, among other things, the 4-0 win over PSV for the Johan Cruijff Schaal. He remains cautious, however, about AZ’s chances in the Eredivisie.

“You always hope for that top three,” says Nijman. “They always say they want to challenge that traditional top three. It would be nice for once. Top three would be very nice one day.” He doesn’t see a title happening any time soon, though. “I don’t think so. I think Ajax will be strong this year.”

After the detour into football, the conversation quickly returned to darts. Nijman can look back on a first half of the season that far exceeded even his own expectations. Eight times he was able to add a title to his résumé.

“Absolutely,” he answers when asked if he is satisfied. “I didn’t think or hope beforehand that my first half-year would yield so many titles and that I’d also get into pretty good form. So yes, I’m very happy with it.”

Van der Voort pointed to an important change Nijman made prior to his successful spell. The Dutchman quit his job to focus fully on his darts career. Such a choice offers more time to practice and travel, but it gives no guarantees of better results. For Nijman, that decision paid off almost immediately. Still, he did wonder beforehand what would happen if the switch to life as a full-time darter backfired.

“It’s always a little bit in your head, of course,” Nijman admits. “But I wasn’t too worried about it turning out badly. I actually had more in my head: it can’t get worse. Or at least, it can’t go backwards if you put more time into it. And I think that’s the case with everything.”

Thanks to his strong performances, Nijman has now earned an excellent position across various rankings. That doesn’t mean he will take it easy in the autumn. He intends to play all the Players Championship events. “The only good reason to really skip ProTours, in my opinion, is if you play Premier League, because then it just gets really too busy,” Nijman explains. “And it’s not like my exhibition schedule is jam-packed. So I’ll just keep playing.”

He actually sees the high volume of matches as a key factor behind his good form. For Nijman, rhythm matters more than resting for the sake of rest. “I think that’s only beneficial. It ultimately contributed to that form in the first half of the year. If you’re playing so much and playing so many matches, and you’re in a good groove, it only gets better.”

Given his meteoric rise, the question inevitably arises as to how far Nijman has now come in his quest to reach the Premier League of Darts. The Dutchman is increasingly establishing himself among the players moving towards the very top of the world rankings, but he himself does not want to get ahead of himself just yet.

“I think that’s still quite a way off,” says Nijman. “I believe the Premier League places won’t be allocated until the second half of the year. I’d need to put in a few more good results if I really want to make it onto that shortlist.”

Van der Voort does see possibilities, but also stresses that performances on television will carry the most weight. Nijman can win as many floor events and Euro Tours as he likes; ultimately he must also impress on the big stages to stake a claim for an invitation.

Nijman himself therefore prefers to use the word “dream” rather than “goal.” “It’s not really a goal, but you could see it more as a dream. That you want to work towards it, but that it doesn’t necessarily have to happen.”

One of the moments this summer when Nijman could test himself on the big stage was the World Matchplay in Blackpool. After his win over Dave Chisnall, a Dutch showdown with Gian van Veen awaited in the second round.

Nijman lost, but still came away with a strikingly positive feeling about that match. “It might sound strange after a second-round defeat, but I think that was probably the most enjoyable match of the entire tournament,” he reflects. “Also at a high level.”

He mainly regretted that the two Dutchmen met so early. “It’s a shame that it happens as early as the second round. I won’t say the path would have opened up after that, but if you avoid Humphries and Littler for as long as possible, you always know there are opportunities in a tournament like that.”

He could hardly blame himself for his own performance. “If you look at the way I lost that match, I don’t think it was an embarrassment or anything.”

The build-up to the clash with Van Veen was also far from normal. Earlier in the evening, Cameron Menzies fell ill during his match against Ross Smith, causing that contest to end prematurely. That had direct consequences for the schedule of Nijman and Van Veen.

“That whole lead-up to the match was pretty weird anyway,” says Nijman. “Because Menzies basically dropped out. So we actually had to head over there again an hour in advance. We were just warming up and watched it unfold.”

Nijman tried to get immediate clarity about the impact on his own match, but that proved difficult at the time. “I asked straight away: what does this mean for us? At that moment, which is understandable, you don’t get a very clear answer, because they don’t know yet either. But from the moment I knew I had to go downstairs and that I would end up on the stage, there were only ten minutes.”

As a result, a large part of the usual mental build-up to an important match was missing. “Then you have much less build-up towards a match like that and less awareness of the match.”

Van der Voort understood the frustration. According to the former pro, television also has a major say in such situations, and organizers want to resume the program as quickly as possible. “It’s very inconvenient for your preparation,” he concluded.

Nijman did not dwell on the defeat for long. The high standard of the match made the loss easier to accept. “You always make peace with it more easily if you lose when it’s a good match,” he explains. “If you really squander bucketloads of chances, you obviously accept it far less readily than when you play a genuinely good game.”

As an example, Nijman pointed to an earlier painful defeat in which he did feel he had completely let the win slip away. Matches like that linger longer.

“I’m generally someone who comes to terms with a defeat fairly quickly, mind you, but that was one of my biggest disappointments on a stage match.”

The World Matchplay clearly did not fall into that category. The loss to Van Veen was disappointing because of the opportunities that might have opened up later in the tournament, but not because of his own game.

That naturally brings Nijman to the next step in his development. On the ProTour he has now proven that he can win tournaments with great regularity. The challenge is to convert that level into deep runs on the major televised stages.

“It would be great to break through at a TV tournament at some point,” says Nijman. “To a semi-final, a final spot, maybe win one. But everything has to fall into place.”

He also knows that such results are needed if he wants to start thinking seriously about things like the Premier League. “It’s certainly possible, but if you want to look ahead to next year, the Premier League and things like that, then that has to happen.”

A potential opponent en route to such a big TV result is, of course, Luke Littler. Nijman has a positive head-to-head record against the English superstar from the past, although several of those meetings date back to their youth years.

The idea of facing Littler on television does not make Nijman nervous. “Yeah, why not?” he replies. “I think if I were to play like that for a whole year, then it doesn’t really make much difference. Only, the fact is that you want to avoid the two Lukes for as long as possible. I think everyone does.”

He is, of course, referring to Littler and Luke Humphries, the two players who have produced an exceptionally high level on the biggest stages in recent years.

Van der Voort emphasized that with his best game, Nijman can also have chances against Littler. “If you play like that, then he’ll have to make sure he plays like that too,” said the former World Matchplay finalist. “Sometimes a match just doesn’t click. And if Wessel then hits his own level, why can’t you win?”

Nijman also knows from history that no period of dominance lasts forever. “Of course,” he answered when asked whether Littler will eventually start losing more often again. “A few years back we also thought Michael would never drop off. And you can see that’s happening now too.”