Five days after winning the Premier League Darts title by vanquishing world No 1 Luke Humphries with a sensational nine-dart finish before a mass of 14,000 roaring spectators inside London’s O2 Arena, Luke Littler has found himself up against a far less forgiving opponent on Wednesday afternoon: Manhattan’s snarling rush-hour traffic.
An all-day media spree pinballing around New York City to promote this weekend’s US Darts Masters at Madison Square Garden has careened off the rails after the hired driver of Littler’s black Cadillac Escalade ESV went to the wrong location for a live in-studio appearance on Ariel Helwani’s The MMA Hour podcast, leaving the show’s genial host treading water on air. When he finally arrives at the Financial District offices nearly 40 minutes late, the 17-year-old sensation known as Luke the Nuke calmly slides into his chair on set while an entourage including his parents, girlfriend and best mate crowd into the green room to watch, all of them smarting from the same lesson every New York neophyte absorbs early on: the subway is always faster.
