I don’t remember exactly what I was doing in the spring after I turned 19. I know it was the second semester of my sophomore year of college and a few things that became formative experiences and hallmarks of my time at Hofstra had already begun to come into shape: I’d joined the newspaper (as a web-then-sports editor), become an RA and I’m fairly certain I had started working in the Poli Sci office as a student aide at this point.

I also, and I am absolutely sure about this, had not won a World Darts Championship or Premier League of Darts title, let alone two, at that point in my life. So, to be clear, I don’t exactly know what was going through Luke Littler’s head at the same age after doing precisely that this past Thursday in front of a sold out crowd in London’s O2 arena. But it sure seemed like a lot, perhaps even an overwhelming amount:

For those unfamiliar, the Premier League of Darts is the sport’s biggest showcase, overshadowing even the World Championship in terms of the amount of exposure it provides the sport on an annual basis. Essentially a 17-week barnstorming tour that exists entirely outside the official PDC¹ competition calendar, its status as a non-ranking event (meaning that winning money here doesn’t count towards the ranking used to qualify for all the other tournaments you might want to enter in the back half of the year) creates an almost impossible situation for many of the competitors involved in it every year.

Not to get too inside baseball (that’s what the eventual Darty Party USA newsletter will be for) but because several of the semi-major tournaments in the second half of the year are done through a one-year qualifying schedule, no matter how much money the best players in the world accumulate at the largest tournaments, they are required to play in smaller tournaments throughout the year until they reach the qualification threshold for the Players Championship Finals and European Championships.⁴

With the Premier League schedule requiring travel through much of Western Europe with a show every Thursday night, all while running concurrently with the first run of European Tour stops and Players Championship days, the entire situation conspires to make it one of the (if not the most) grueling tests in the entire sport. The compressed schedule requires all eight participants¹ to run full speed for three and a half months while also flying back and forth around Europe just to keep afloat their hopes of qualifying for events in the latter half of the year.

And it’s not just the travel that wears on everyone involved.

From the commentators to the best players in the competition, no one seems to find much pleasure in persisting through the Premier League in its current format. It’s reached the point where even PDC chief executive Matt Porter has admitted that the format is reaching the “end of its life cycle”. Playoff participants — which is to say, people who have done well in spite of whatever feelings they may have towards the proceedings — like Gerwyn Price have routinely slammed the format as “repetitive” to the point where “the Iceman” serious contemplated declining an invitation to last season’s run before finally agreeing to join in for the seventh of his eight runs in the past nine years.

Gary Anderson, one of the true legends of the game and a two-time PL (and world championship) winner, has went full freight with his reservation and refusal, making it clear that even in the event of winning another world championship (and thereby automatically qualifying for the event), he still wouldn’t even consider participating in the event again. Anderson cited specifically the travel schedule and repetitive format as the reasons he’d decline any overture or invitation to participate, telling TalkSport “If I done the Premier League, Europeans gone, Players Championship gone. I couldn't give a monkeys [if I'm world champion]. I can't do it.”

Which makes it all the more remarkable for Littler, who turned 19 in January, that he’s been so successful in such a never-ending shit twister before breaking down at the end of last week’s final showdown in front of the largest crowd in darts. Though, part of that high tolerance might be that the grind of the Premier League and all that comes with it is all he’s ever known as a professional darts player⁵. But, as is so often the case when lighting a candle on both ends, he seems to have finally reached the point where he’s burnt out on not just being the face of the sport, but a major character in the never ending melodrama that envelops most British sport.

Because from that standpoint, even without idiots like Simon Jordan launching personal attacks against Littler, this year was easily his most arduous one so far in his three seasons in the Premier League⁶. With a shockingly slow start (for him at least) to the season, Littler struggled to find the form he had previously shown with wins in the first two majors of the year (the Masters and UK Open). It took him six weeks to reach his first final, a win which launched him on a roller coaster ride for the next six weeks, taking two of the next three nightly wins before disaster struck in his beloved Manchester to set him off in the biggest controversy of his young career.

There’s a lot of context to consider, but to put it as succinctly as possible, he was involved in a spat with World Championship runner-up Gian van Veen after GvV accused him of celebrating van Veen’s miss on a crucial dart after Littler fell behind in front of the Nuke’s “hometown”⁷ crowd. This downward spiral reached a nadir two weeks after the initial incident, when Littler heard it from the Rotterdam crowd in The Netherlands, where van Veen has usurped fellow Premier League player Michael Van Gerwen as the country’s top-ranked darts player, on his way to losing that week’s final.

While your mileage may vary on how much vitriol Littler deserved for his initial transgressions⁸ it had clearly reached a point in his head where, according to what he said following his championship victory, he had seriously considered quitting the competition after compounding his failure in Manchester with a stumble the following week in Brighton.

Which is where in the timeline he broke down twice while discussing the difficulties he dealt with through the season in his post-match interview with Polly James. It is also the point at which, I have to admit, my instincts as a parent kicked in. Now, Luke Littler is much closer to a grown man than my adorable daughter is to being even at the Britney Spears crossroads of “Not a girl, but not yet a woman”. But, in watching him struggle there, and needing to be comforted by his fiercest rival (and most ardent supporter) Luke Humphries, it’s clear he’s still something resembling a kid.

At least in the same way I was while trying to figure out whether or not I wanted to get Sbarro’s again in the student center while pulling yet another all-nighter while we waited for stories to come in and fill our sports section. And although I had responsibilities and expectations that I needed to be on top of, not a single one of them led me to being pulled in a million different directions by a thousand different people.

Or in ways that the human brain, no matter how seasoned through age and experience, is not fully equipped to deal with. Like having to juggle every new relationship on national television while dealing with a massive influx of cash and fame that make me a target of nearly every nefarious actor in my immediate vicinity trying to score a cheap point or make a quick buck off of me.

It also made me think of OSA’s favorite cricket Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, another wunderkind⁹ with the weight of the world on his shoulders. Both have already blown past the normal stages of saturation in the public eye, almost immediately being turned into megastars around which their entire professions may begin to revolve. Which is a scary thing to contemplate, especially as you get older and can began to feel the weight of the world on your shoulders simply because fewer and fewer people feel the need to help you shoulder such a significant load.

One has to hope for two things: That Littler realizes that the ones who stay, like Luke Humphries — who it needs to be said, did an absolutely incredible job working through his own emotions immediately after losing in a last leg decider — are the ones who are strong enough to share the burden in moments like this.

And that, while it hurts to see anyone struggle with these kind of ideas in their head at such a young age, the feeling he had in the moment after his win last Thursday was a fleeting one and not the beginning of the end of one of the most exciting things to happen in sports since they started keeping score.

The PDC World Cup draw has been announced and, with it, we have a look at the composition of the twelve groups of three that will compete in the preliminary rounds for a spot in the full World Cup bracket where the top four teams in the tournament await them.