Who is the youngest player to hit a televised nine-darter?
Littler’s nine-darter at the Bahrain Darts Masters in January 2024 came days before his 17th birthday, and it stood as the youngest televised perfect leg for nearly three years. Self was 16 years and 345 days old on 28 October — eighteen days inside it. Eighteen days of margin, and no more.
| Player | Age | Event | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Archie Self | 16 years 345 days | MODUS Super Series Champions Week, Portsmouth | 28 Oct 2026 |
| Luke Littler | 16 years 363 days | Bahrain Darts Masters | Jan 2024 |
The leg itself was the orthodox route, the one every player who has ever practised a perfect leg knows by heart: seven treble 20s, then treble 19 and double 12. It arrived in the opening leg of a Champions Week group match against the experienced Danny Ayres, and Self won the match from there.
Source: oche180.com and The Table Read match reports
There is nothing exotic about 180-180-141 — it is the standard checkout that makes nine darts possible at all, and we set out why in our guide to the nine-dart finish. What is unusual is throwing it on a broadcast at an age when most players are still in county youth darts. It was Self’s second nine-darter of 2026; the first came on the PDC Development Tour in Hildesheim in August, in front of a floor-event crowd rather than a camera.
Saturday: beaten by Baetens, then beating him
Champions Week finals night put six survivors into two groups of three, then two semi-finals and a final, all in one evening. Self came out of the group second, having lost 4-3 to Baetens in his last group match, and the Belgian went into the semi-finals as the man in form.
| Stage | Result | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Group, match 1 | Archie Self 4-3 David Davies | Self survives a decider |
| Group, match 2 | Andy Baetens 4-0 David Davies | Baetens whitewash |
| Group, match 3 | Andy Baetens 4-3 Archie Self | Baetens tops the group |
| Semi-final 1 | Andy Baetens 4-3 Derek Coulson | Second decider of the night |
| Semi-final 2 | Archie Self 4-2 Scott Robertson | Self averages 107.92 |
| Final | Archie Self 4-2 Andy Baetens | Series 15 title, £25,000 |
Baetens survived a decider against Derek Coulson. Self did not need one: he put away Scott Robertson 4-2 with a 107.92 average, the best number anyone produced all night, and reached the final having missed next to nothing.
The final turned on doubles rather than scoring. Self went 3-1 ahead while Baetens kept arriving at a finish and leaving without it — the match reports from DartsNews and Dartfreakz both counted two successful attempts from twenty for the Belgian. Baetens pulled a leg back at 3-2, and Self closed it out in 16 darts for the Series 15 title.
Baetens, who throws as “The Beast from the East” and works a full-time job away from the oche, had outscored almost everyone across the week’s group phase. On the night that mattered he could not finish.
Who is Archie Self?
He is 16, from Berkshire, and he throws under the nickname “The Archer”. He has been winning things for a while without much of the sport noticing. In December 2024 he won the WDF Boys’ World Championship at Lakeside, the same Frimley Green stage that hosts the WDF World Championship at the end of this month. In October 2026 he won the England Masters. Days later he took his maiden PDC title on the Development Tour.
That Development Tour win was Event 22 in Wigan, 5-2 against Sam Jackson, and it lifted him from sixteenth to ninth on the final Development Tour Order of Merit. He added £4,100 across that closing weekend, the biggest haul of anyone in the top twelve, and still finished outside the two places that carried a Tour Card and a World Championship seat. Ninth is a long way from nowhere and a long way from a card.
Self is not the only teenager rewriting records this season. Jayden Walker was 14 when he became the youngest senior WDF title winner in Selsey in October. The difference is that Self has now done it on television, in a studio where the commentary gets piped to a free streaming channel and the clip travels the internet by itself.
What MODUS Super Series Champions Week actually is
It is easy to dismiss as a studio event, which is exactly why the record caught people out. The MODUS Super Series is played in a purpose-built venue in Portsmouth and streamed free on Pluto TV, and it runs on a simple cycle: twelve game weeks, a weekly winner crowned every Saturday, and then a thirteenth week in which those twelve weekly champions meet to settle the series.
Within a week the players are split across three groups, with Monday to Wednesday given over to the biggest of them and the rest of the places decided on Thursday and Friday before Saturday’s finals night. Matches are round-robin 501, best of seven legs. The winner of Champions Week takes £25,000 — more than a Players Championship title pays, and a figure that explains why established tour players keep entering.
Self qualified by winning Week 12, which is also why he was in Group A on the Wednesday to throw the nine darts. He won 13 of his 15 group matches. MODUS called him only the second 16-year-old to win a series in the Live Lounge.
What comes next
Nothing on the professional calendar changes for Self this week. He holds no PDC Tour Card, and the two floor events left in the season are Players Championship 33 and 34 in Leicester on 4 and 5 November. The route open to him is Q-School in January, and before that the rest of the youth and WDF season — the dates are on the 2026 calendar.
What he has instead is £25,000, a series title, and a record that will be read out every time he walks on a stage for the next decade. Littler held it for two years and nine months. Self turns 17 later this month.