Luke Littler's former darts coach has previously revealed why he had to "get rid of" the defending world champion from his academy.
We are just days away from the first round of this year's much-anticipated World Darts Championship as tournament favourite Littler kicks off his title defence against 2020 quarter-finalist Darius Labanauska.
It has been a remarkable year for the teenager, who became the youngest ever world number one in November after beating Luke Humphries at the Grand Slam of Darts, just 22 months after turning professional.
Littler will be hoping to defend his world title, a year after he beat Michael van Gerwen to become the youngest ever PDC World Championship winner.
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Ahead of that final against Van Gerwen, St Helens Darts Academy co-founder Karl Holden, who coached Littler from the age of nine, spoke about spotting the teenager's talent from the very beginning.
“He was different to all the other kids," Holden told Merseyside Live in January.
"He was too good for the beginners group, so we’d promote him to the next group, and he was too good for that, so we promoted him to the under-21’s. We didn’t want to... he’d just turned 10.”
"After a couple of months, he was winning the under-21s when he was 10," added Holden. "It’s just remarkable how good he was. When he got to about 13 or 14, we just couldn’t help him anymore because he was too good for our group."
Asked how he handled such a promising young player, Holden revealed that Littler's immense talent meant that he could no longer compete at the academy.
"It might sound bad but we sort of got rid of him out of the academy," he told the BBC in a separate interview.
"He knows we didn't mean that in a nasty way, but it was more like: 'Don't come here no more, you're just too good!'. When he was 13 he was just too good for the under-21's.
"He was never going to achieve anything there, so we said: 'Go and beat all the men in the world'. And that's what he's doing."
Holden was then asked what makes him such a good player.
"You need bottle, composure. You need to put the hours in as well," said Holden. "He's spent thousands of hours losing against seasoned competitors. You need to learn to win, and to win, you've got to learn to lose."
On Thursday night, Littler will begin the defence of his PDC world title against Darius Labanauskas, who was a quarter-finalist in 2020.
Topics: Darts, World Darts Championship, Luke Littler
Jack Kenmare