For the third time in this match, Gian van Veen is lining up the bull finish for a 170. This time, though, he steps away from the oche, and as the noise builds and swells around him, as the applause hardens into a tribal rhythm, he smiles. And in that moment, with millions of pairs of eyes on him, with glory within his grasp, he just knows. Knows that after all the years of hope and toil, of dreams and dismay, his moment is here at last.
That’s the thing about the future: you spend lifetimes waiting for it, peering into the glass, reading the tea leaves, and when it arrives it happens all at once. It was a little after half past nine on the first evening of the year, and already the throngs were streaming out of Alexandra Palace and back down the hill, convinced beyond any fraction of a doubt that they had just seen the next few years of darts take shape.
Barely an hour of time on the oche, barely a couple of hours in total, was all it took for Van Veen and Luke Littler to secure their passages to the semi-finals of the world championship. Different tests, with a different weight of history on each, and yet negotiated in much the same fashion: while Littler smashed Krzysztof Ratajski 5-0, Van Veen crushed the 2024 champion, Luke Humphries, 5-1 to continue his own inexorable ascent towards the summit of darts.
And so a rivalry forged in the youth ranks of the sport comes one step closer to rejoining on the biggest stage of all. Of course, Ryan Searle and Gary Anderson will have plenty to say about that when they play Littler and Van Veen respectively in Friday’s semi-finals. But whatever happens in those games, this was the night when it felt the future of darts became its present. Certainly this was the night Van Veen, already the European champion and now the world No 3 and a Premier League lock-in, catapulted himself into genuinely elite company.
A more symbolic milestone is that for the first time in two decades the Dutch No 1 is neither Raymond van Barneveld or Michael van Gerwen. A keen tennis fan, Van Veen’s eyes lit up when one journalist compared it to Carlos Alcaraz eventually surpassing Rafael Nadal. “Growing up as a Dutchman, the goal was always to be No 2, because in my head, you cannot overtake Michael van Gerwen,” he said.
The idea of Littler and Van Veen as the Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner of their sport has a certain seductive narrative quality to it. In truth, Humphries is going nowhere for a while, Josh Rock still has plenty of gears in him and Beau Greaves has the talent to go as far as she wants. But at the very least a changing of the guard seems to have occurred, the era of Van Gerwen and Gerwyn Price and Peter Wright and Michael Smith already receding.
This is a sport for the young and the hungry and ideally the childless, players with boundless energy and time amid an increasingly gruelling schedule. In which context the presence of the 55-year-old Anderson in the last four strikes a pleasing note of dissonance, a throwback to a different, more innocent age of the sport.
It was Anderson who finally ended Justin Hood’s remarkable challenge in the afternoon, winning 5-2 in a game wreathed in smiles and good humour. And this has always been Anderson’s unique appeal: the sense that he’d much rather be throwing in the pub with his mates. He doesn’t need the cash. He doesn’t really practise much any more. But he’s two wins away from his third world championship: proof that while rankings fluctuate, genius endures.
His friend Searle is cut from the same kind of cloth: a sublime talent who has always wanted but never really needed to win. Like Anderson, he has never been the most dedicated or driven of players. Just a couple of months ago he didn’t even bother trying to qualify for the Grand Slam because, in his words, he didn’t want “another week in a hotel room”.
But something seems to have clicked in him here: an appreciation that now is finally the time to make good on his promise. He swept aside Jonny Clayton 5-2 in the afternoon, dropping his first two sets of the tournament in the process, and if he brings his A-game against Littler, Alexandra Palace could be treated to one of its classic semi-finals.
As for Littler, it was a far more serene night’s work after the rancour and recrimination of his win against Rob Cross on Tuesday. There were a few boos waiting for him as he took the stage, but the world champion quickly won them over with a brutal, nonchalant 33-minute exhibition that included a 170 to clinch the opening set.
