LONDON -- By the end of it, even the board seemed to be begging for mercy, the sisal fibres noticeably fraying around the treble 20 and treble 19 beds. Having hammered in 10 180s and amassed an average of more than a ton, Luke Littler finally plucked his last tungsten arrow from the pockmarked board and turned to see his vanquished opponent bowing at him.
This is the life of the boy king. A talent so precocious and unyielding that only one man has ever found a way to beat him on the World Championship stage. Every comfortable victory over each would-be usurper is different, but also completely the same.
"It's not effortless," Littler insists. "You've always got to put effort in. Obviously on the tele, it might not look like it. But yeah, there's always effort being put in."
As the makings of a supermoon hung menacingly in the freezing air over the vaulted halls of Alexandra Palace, Littler went to work. The opening volleys are by now familiar: zeroing in on the red-painted treble 20, moving down to the 19s when things get too tight, brief dalliances with treble 18 to keep the senses keen.
An early setback as Ryan Searle took the first set was countered by Littler with a renewed focus on tops -- a section of the board he usually glances at on his way to his favoured double 10.
Then came the moment all who stand behind the 18-year-old at the oche must face and hope to endure. At some point, Littler will, as he puts it "switch it up a few gears and get them 180s going", and when that phase comes -- as it did here when Littler won 11 consecutive legs and twice threw six perfect darts -- all his opponent can do is cling to the railings and hope to avoid being swept away.
For Searle, the wave was simply too fast, too devastating, and he simply lost his grip on the contest. You could see the blood drain from his face as weeks of hard work -- the best of his life -- fell away in a matter of minutes. But that's not to say that Searle could have done more than he did. He even pulled off a 170 checkout, but by the time he did, The Nuke was so far ahead that as Searle hit the bullseye, Littler was miming reeling in the Big Fish to the crowd with his back to the action.
"Obviously it's always good to pick up a few legs and when your opponent's chasing you, you can kind of tell, and Ryan got a bit frustrated at times," Littler said. "You see a player frustrated, you've always got to pounce on it, and that's what I did."
Not that there was any shame for Searle for coming up short. The former window cleaner is a complex character who has overcome a rare eye condition that is so severe that he could be prevented from driving one day soon, to produce a career-best run to the last four. But such is the sense of shock surrounding his timely rich vein of form, you do wonder if he'll ever be back here again.
One man who might just be able to withstand the whirlwind is the man Littler will face next. Gian van Veen and Littler have met several times before, most notably in the World Youth Championship final in 2023 which The Nuke won shortly before making his historic run to the final of the senior event at the age of 16.
Three years later, a favourable draw and helpful results have meant Littler has effectively swanned through to this final without coming up against any of the tournament's top 16 seeds. Van Veen, though, has emerged victorious from heavyweight clashes with Luke Humphries, and now Gary Anderson.
One of those contests that has Wayne Mardle speaking in tongues, the clash between the Giant Dutchman and the Flying Scotsman was marked by the sight of Van Veen refusing to blink when facing the storm. With the crowd at his back, Anderson threw the kitchen sink at Van Veen in an electric fifth set as he averaged 117.44 and hit 59% of his doubles. And yet Van Veen persevered, hitting an 11-darter, then a 12-darter on his way to an unlikely set victory that served to dent his opponent's resolve.
Resilience under pressure is the story of Van Veen -- a young man who has admitted that only relatively recently, he was contemplating his future in the sport.
"I remember three or four years ago I was in Barnsley in the Metrodome and I was struggling with dartitis. I was crying at the table and look at me four years later. It's all been worth it," an emotional Van Veen told reporters.
Saturday's final, played between an 18-year-old and a 23-year-old is a changing of the guard. The barrage from 55-year-old Anderson was perhaps the last swing the pub generation will manage in the sport. Here is the age of the streamers, the do-it- yourself disruptors.
And yet, amid all the bluster and the bravado, either Littler or Van Veen, or perhaps both of them at different points, will line up to throw a dart at a double for £1 million -- who will keep their head while everyone around them is losing theirs?
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