Luke Littler maintained his blistering form with victory over Joe Cullen to win the Austrian Open title in Graz.
The 17-year-old Premier League leader produced another top-drawer display as he swept past ‘The Rockstar’ 8-4 in the final, hitting four 180s with a match average of just over 102.
It was a second PDC European Tour title for ‘The Nuke’, who won the Belgian Open in March on what was his event debut.
Sunday’s final at the Steiermarkhalle had stayed on throw until the eighth leg, when Littler took out 65 on double top to move 5-3 ahead.
Although Cullen immediately broke back, Littler put the hammer down again to take the 10th leg against the throw and regain control.
Littler held the next leg to move one away from victory – which he delivered with another break after a clinical 71 checkout on the bullseye.
Cullen had earlier held off Masters champion Stephen Bunting to win their semi-final 7-5 while Littler built on two breaks of throw to coast past Ross Smith 7-2 with a match average over 105.
In his quarter-final, Littler had not quite hit top form as he edged past Danny Noppert in a deciding leg following a fightback by the Dutchman.
Elsewhere in the last eight, Cullen landed three 180s and threw an average of 104 in his 6-3 victory over Gian van Veen.
Bunting held off Germany’s Martin Schindler to come through in the final leg before Smith completed an impressive 6-1 win over former world champion Michael van Gerwen.
In Sunday’s third-round action during the afternoon session, Cullen had beaten top seed Dave Chisnall 6-3 while Schindler put out Welshman Jonny Clayton by the same score.
Littler came from behind to win five straight legs and defeat Poland’s Krzysztof Ratajski 6-3 before Dutchman van Gerwen then closed out a 6-4 win over Peter Wright.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here