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Featured Image Credit: Sky Sports
Topics: Darts, World Darts Championship, Luke Humphries, Fan Reactions
Ryan Smart
Topics: Darts, World Darts Championship, Luke Humphries, Fan Reactions
Darts fans declared that Gian van Veen had defeated Luke Humphries in the World Championship quarter-final before the final set was played.
Humphries, the 2024 champion, faced his toughest challenge at Alexandra Palace so far against world number five Van Veen.
The Dutchman, 23, has had a superb season on the Pro Tour and won his first ranking title in October.
He then followed that up with the World Youth Championship title, defeating Beau Greaves in the final.
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Luke Littler, who competed on the Development Tour with Van Veen, tipped him to beat Humphries and progress to the semi-final.
And Van Veen produced an inspired performance to beat Humphries 5-1 and make it through to the semi-finals.
Although the first five sets were all relatively tight, Van Veen was more consistent in key moments, winning three of his first four sets by three legs to two and breaking Humphries' throw in the final leg on each occasion.
In set five, he broke Humphries' throw to take full control of the match.
But fans were shocked at Humphries' failure to hit big numbers on several occasions.
In the third set, Humphries walked to the oche needing an 80 checkout, but hit treble 5 with his first dart.
While there was still an opportunity to rescue the set, he then hit just 2 on his next dart to leave him with no chance of checking out - having hit just 40, including a single 1, from his previous visit to the board.
Van Veen capitalised to go 2-1 up and never looked back.
But fans think a moment in the fifth set completely ended Humphries' hopes - even if he still held hopes of a comeback at that stage.
The 2024 champion needed 95 from three darts, but hit 19 from his first dart.
Instead of reverting to a different treble, Humphries instead went for double 19 - but missed the board entirely.
His third shot at double 18 also missed the board, and Van Veen cleaned up to take the set and lead 4-1.
Given that the majority of sets had been decided by fine margins, and with Humphries being one of the top two players on planet darts in the past three years, bouncing back by taking set six could have put pressure back on Van Veen and led to a comeback.
But fans felt his chances of doing that were zero after his error on the doubles.
One fan wrote: "Humphries is gone, going D18 last dart and missing the board proves that, silly dart."
A second said: "Luke's gone, Gian's done him here."
A third wrote: "That's game over. I've never known Humphries be so bad in the crunch moments in games."
And a fourth added: "Luke is out of the match. You just have to look at his face."