PDC

Luke Littler’s Relentless Scoring Power: 558 Maximums and Counting in 2025

Originally posted on Dartsnews.com | Last updated Aug 21, 2025 10:13 AM ET

For most players, becoming World Champion at 17 would be the peak of their career. For Luke Littler, it has simply been the starting point. Eight months into 2025, The Nuke has already stacked up a trophy haul that cements his status as the sport’s dominant force — and he’s doing it on the back of a scoring game that is rewriting the standards of elite darts.

A season of milestones

Littler fulfilled his destiny on the biggest stage back in January by dispatching Michael van Gerwen 7–3 in the World Championship final, becoming the youngest world champion in darts history. By March he had already added the UK Open to his CV, seeing off James Wade in Minehea d, and sandwiched that with victory at the Belgian Darts Open.

There have been bumps in the road. Littler’s defence of the Premier League crown ended with Luke Humphries lifting the trophy, while their pairing at the World Cup of Darts never clicked. But even those setbacks were quickly answered.

At the World Matchplay in July, Littler produced another statement performance. He beat Wade 18–13 in the final at Blackpool’s Winter Gardens, joining an elite group — Phil Taylor, Van Gerwen, Gary Anderson and Humphries — to have completed the sport’s modern ‘Triple Crown’ of the World Championship, Premier League and Matchplay titles.

Dominance on the World Series stage

The summer extended his winning streak beyond the PDC’s traditional majors. Littler swept both legs of the Oceania World Series, lifting the Australian Darts Masters and the New Zealand Darts Masters. His victory over Humphries in Hamilton came with a scarcely believable 115.02 average, one of the highest ever produced in a televised final.

That kind of scoring power is what continues to separate Littler from the rest. His game isn’t built around scrapping for holds or eking out scruffy legs — it’s built on sustained, heavy artillery.

558 maximums and counting

The numbers tell the story better than anything else. Littler has already hit 558 180s in 2025, a figure that towers over the rest of the circuit and illustrates why his opponents are under constant pressure from the very first dart of every leg.

It’s not just the volume of maximums, but when they arrive. Littler has a habit of pinning 180s in the middle of legs to turn a routine hold into a two-dart finish, or dropping them in consecutive visits to completely suffocate an opponent’s throw.

For all his youth, Littler has developed the one attribute that defines every all-time great: the ability to make his natural game translate to the sport’s biggest stages. Scoring this heavily week after week is what keeps him in finals, and winning them.

Raising the bar

When Phil Taylor was in his pomp, his relentless scoring made him unbeatable. Van Gerwen raised the standard again a decade later with his power-scoring peak. Now Littler looks to be doing the same, only at an even younger age and with even less ceiling in sight.

558 maximums before the end of August is more than just a stat — it’s the clearest sign yet that the game is entering another era, and Littler is the player leading it.