Dan Dawson discusses Luke Humphries' rise
Such has been his dominance, it’s crazy to think that this time last year Luke Humphries had not won a major PDC title.
Cool Hand has more than made up for it since, winning the World Grand Prix, Grand Slam of Darts, Players Championship Finals, World Championship and World Matchplay, with a World Cup thrown in for good measure.
Someone who has observed Humphries’ rise at close quarters – the commentator Dan Dawson – feels his dominance is unlike anything we have seen since Phil Taylor and Michael van Gerwen were racking up title after title.
But he says we will have to wait until the end of Humphries’ career to know his true place among the game’s greats.
“Luke Humphries holds more major PDC titles than he does not – and, in a couple of those titles that he hasn’t won, he’s been in the final,” Dawson said in an interview with DartAsylum.
"It took an unbelievable Luke Littler to stop him in the Premier League and he missed darts to beat Dimitri Van den Bergh in the UK Open, so it could have been even more dominant from Luke Humphries this year.
“It’s the likes of which we have not seen other than from Taylor and Van Gerwen – it has been that good. How long he does this for is what will dictate where we see him in the list of all-time greats. “He is still a young man and he is also going to have to maintain this sort of level in a professional darting world where I believe the strength in depth is better than ever, so it is very, very difficult. “It’s not just one, two or three rivals he’s got to look out for – there are rivals all over the place. There are players who can throw world-class darts and beat him – but it hasn’t happened very often over the last 12 months. “I do not know where we are going to view Luke Humphries come the end of his career. I don’t know when the end of his career will be. But I think the spell we have seen in the last 12 months has been right up there with the best we’ve ever seen from any player.”
Since lifting the Grand Prix on 8 October last year, he’s built on the undoubted quality he previously showed in dominating on the EuroTour, where he won four titles in 2022 alone. And all from a player who only made his Premier League debut in February this year. “The floodgates have actually opened for Cool Hand,” added Dawson. “I remember speaking to Peter Wright early last year and he was saying ‘everybody needs to watch out, because when Luke starts getting it right, he will be unstoppable’ – and how right Peter Wright was.
“It’s been an incredible rise, he has been sensational, but there were signs. His dominance on the EuroTour, for example. The thing I like about Luke Humphries is that he’s done it in exactly the way you would want him to do – brilliant on the youth system, won everything there; then got on the ProTour and made incremental progress.
“He had a year of making loads of finals, not winning anything, he had a year of winning loads of ProTour titles, mainly on the European Tour. Then the following year, he starts winning majors, he keeps winning majors, world champion, world number one, everything that comes with it. “The question is how long does this last? I mean, there’s no sign of it stopping, it looks like it could go on for some time. But he’s going to have to do it in a highly competitive era with threats from all over the place, so i think it makes it very exciting.”
Written by Steve Cotton