I can beat the best in the Premier League – Littler
LUKE Littler is ready to “kick on” in the Premier League after taking the darts world by storm. The teenage sensation has enjoyed a whirlwind few weeks since his remarkable, headline-grabbing run to the final of the PDC World Championship last month.
Littler followed up his Alexandra Palace heroics by winning the Bahrain Masters and reaching the final of the Dutch Masters.
The Warrington-based youngster now wants to make his mark in the Premier League, having reached the semi-finals on his debut in the elite tournament in Cardiff last week.
His next opportunity comes in Berlin on the the second night of the competition tomorrow.
“I am happy with how I have been playing,” Littler, who also turned 17 last month, told the PA news agency.
“The Worlds was a big step up, but I have proved I can play with the best and that is why I have got my shot in the Premier League.
“It was good to win on my debut (in Bahrain) and obviously be the youngest person to hit a nine-darter as well. But overall it was just match practice for the Premier League, as was Holland. Now we are kicking on with the Premier League. I know I have got the ability to beat the best.”
Littler has so far taken his sudden fame in his stride. The player nicknamed ‘The Nuke’ was a relative unknown in December, but his performances at such a young age have earned him recognition beyond the world of darts.
He said: “It’s just been crazy, but I’ve just been living how I have been doing – chilling when I have time off but when I’m at my darts events, being fully focused. That’s what I have always done. I have always been myself and keep myself to myself.”
Littler, whose brand new range of merchandise will be launched by Target Darts later this month, admits he has some mixed feelings about all the attention, particularly the media interest in his life on and off the oche.
Asked if he has enjoyed being interviewed so often, he said: “I have and I haven’t. It does get boring!”
The teenager is scheduled to play Rob Cross in the quarter-finals in Berlin tomorrow – the third match of the evening.
Nathan Aspinall and Michael van Gerwen will open proceedings before Michael Smith faces Gerwyn Price in a repeat of last week’s final. The fourth quarter-final sees world champion Luke Humphries take on Peter Wright.
Newly-crowned Masters champion Stephen Bunting has opened up on his battles with mental health and revealed how a hypnotist helped turn his career around.
The 38-year-old won his first televised PDC major title on Sunday when he outclassed Michael van Gerwen in the final in Milton Keynes just a few years after nearly walking away from the game.
Bunting, a former BDO world champion, made the switch to the PDC circuit a decade ago and threatened to make waves before he hit a dip that left him depressed.
The Liverpudlian, right, said he felt like a laughing stock and turned to a hypnotist and sports psychologist to get over his demons.
“I was ready for walking away,” he said. “It was awful, I was walking into events and I felt like everyone was laughing at me. I felt like no matter what I was doing everything was going wrong. I was taking it out on my family and locking myself away.
“I was depressed, it was an awful place to be. The psychologist and hypnotist over the last few years have helped, thankfully.
“I was against it at first, but I thought I needed to do something and that was probably the last step that I could take and I went.
“He taught me how to think not just about darts, there’s other things than darts, your family, your home life. I know they say in Peter Pan you think about happy stuff and you can fly, but it is the same sort of logic in darts. If you turn up and are feeling happy and good then you can win.
“The hypnotist helped me with my sleep. That’s the biggest thing for me, a one-hour session with a hypnotist is a four-hour REM state so it helps you to focus, it helps you look at all the positives and stop looking at the negatives. Your mind is 95 per cent negative, so sometimes every one of us will be in the negative side of the brain without even knowing it.
“I don’t think there are many players who have dipped into that, so to have that extra one or two per cent that helps. As you can see I am a champion now, so I’m just happy.”