And with a rush of blood, a flick of the wrist and the pock of a pointed dart in the double-eight bed, it was all over. One dream made and one dream dashed, one destiny fulfilled and one destiny deferred. Luke Humphries, the world No 1, is the new champion of the world, and he did it not simply by defeating the genius of Luke Littler, but by pushing back the tides of fate: standing in the seemingly irresistible path of a great sporting fairytale and meeting it with his own singular brilliance.
It was one of the great Ally Pally finals, one of the greatest and most dramatic tussles this famous stage has ever seen, under some of the greatest pressure ever known, in what will almost certainly be the biggest global audience this sport has ever enjoyed.
The overwhelming weight of emotion and narrative, as well as the noise of the assembled audience, was pointed in a single direction: behind the 16-year-old from Warrington, attempting to pull off a feat unprecedented in darts, and perhaps in the history of British sport.
Humphries, by contrast, was living on nothing but his wits, his own skinny metronomic action, and his own unshakeable belief. At one point he trailed by four sets to two, the hand quivering a little, the brow soaked in sweat, the cheeks flushed and puffing. In the teeth of the storm, he produced the greatest darts of his career, reeling off five consecutive sets for a 7-4 win and a triumph that will change his life forever.
Perhaps it was no surprise, then, that at the moment of victory he simply crumpled to the ground, his legs giving way from beneath him, the tear ducts springing open, his father Mark clasping his head in disbelief.
This has been a triumph of skill and perseverance, a triumph of hard work and resilience, but a triumph above all of belief: that in an era studded with all-time greats, where the overall standard of the game is as high as it has ever been, he would eventually claim the prize his raw talent deserved.
Unlike so many of the stars of this sport, who put up an impregnable façade of bravado and insouciance, Humphries puts his human frailties out there for everyone to see. He struggled badly with panic attacks and depression early in his career, often failed to replicate his floor form in the biggest events, wondered aloud whether, deep down, this organised theatre really was the sport for him.
The response came here over 11 unforgettable sets: an average of 104, 23 180s, five 100-plus finishes including the 170 maximum. Whenever Littler put a foot on his throat, he wriggled free with a big 140 or 180, stole legs and sets with outrageous finishes, punished Littler in the same way the teenage virtuoso has been terrorising hapless opponents all month.
And even in defeat, this has in many ways been Littler’s tournament. It feels trite to suggest that this setback will be the making of him, given the way he seems to have arrived at the very highest level of this sport fully-formed, chiselled and battle-hardened and mentally impregnable, able to ride the waves and surges of adrenalin and noise, able to master the big moments.
From the moment he won his first-round match against Christian Kist, there was an irresistible energy and certainty to him, a force that nobody really knew how to arrest because nobody had ever remotely encountered it before.
This, perhaps, explains why he has looked so unfazed by his rise through the game, so unimpressed by his own remarkable talent, so utterly impervious to pressure. What else does he know? What frame of reference could he possibly compare this to? The pandemic struck when he was 13, at which point his parents ordered him to the practice board to turn a promising talent into a cast-iron career.
Hours and days and weeks and months of throwing darts in every conceivable configuration and situation, learning his way around the board, darts and darts and more darts to the exclusion of anything resembling a normal life. What do they know of darts who only darts know? Quite a lot, as it turns out.
And if there was a turning point in this match of seemingly infinite pivots, then it came in the seventh set, with Littler sitting on double two for a 5-2 lead. For the most fleeting moment Littler’s impeccable mathematics seemed to desert him. He stopped, checked the score, broke his flow, missed. Humphries nicked the set by taking out 208 in four darts, and in hindsight it was the moment the energy of this match decisively began to shift.
Humphries averaged 113, 114 and 109 in sets seven to nine: an act of almost unthinkable defiance in the face of disaster. Even then Littler had his chances: a missed bull at 124 to level the match at 5-5, having taken out 170 earlier in the set.
But ultimately it was the kid standing in the wings, watching the tickertape and the gleam of the trophy, looking for the first time a little dazed and a little weary. As it turned out, this wasn’t his time. But at some point in a gloriously unmappable future, it will be.
