How Woodhouse beat Littler
The scoring was not the story. Littler averaged 82.41, Woodhouse 82.51 — a tenth of a point apart over thirteen legs — and in a double-start event that is close to a coin toss decided entirely on which man found the outer ring first.
Woodhouse should have been ahead after one set and was not. He missed several doubles late in the opener and Littler took it 3-1 without ever settling. From there Woodhouse held throw for the whole of the second set and closed it on double 16 in the deciding leg. The break that mattered came at the start of the third: a 60 finish put him ahead, Littler answered with 98 to stay in it, and Woodhouse shut the match with 75 in two darts on double 12 while Littler sat on 108.
It is the second time in little over a week that Littler’s doubling has cost him a televised match. Jonny Clayton beat him 10-4 in Amsterdam eight days earlier, a match in which Littler hit 19 per cent of his doubles. The Grand Prix simply punishes that harder than any other major, because a missed starting double is not a missed chance to win a leg — it is a visit in which you score nothing at all.
Woodhouse was disarmingly honest about it afterwards. “I’m a bit all over the shop at the moment,” he said. “It’s the first time I’ve played him on a main stage, and safe to say I was shaking a little bit!” He also asked the crowd to go easy on the man he had just beaten: “I hope people will take the time to appreciate how good he is and not give him a hard time.”
Littler posted afterwards: “Well played @lukewoodly180 was a good game, good one to be apart of aswell. Both hit, both missed but Luke took his chance.”
The full night one results
Eight ties, six of them going to a deciding set. Seed numbers are in brackets; the sixteen unseeded men in this draw came through the ProTour list rather than the Order of Merit.
| Winner | Sets | Loser | Legs by set |
|---|---|---|---|
| Danny Noppert (8) | 2-1 | Niko Springer | 3-0, 2-3, 3-0 |
| Ross Smith (13) | 2-1 | Cameron Menzies | 0-3, 3-2, 3-0 |
| Nathan Aspinall (16) | 2-1 | Kevin Doets | 1-3, 3-2, 3-2 |
| Jonny Clayton (5) | 2-1 | Krzysztof Ratajski | 3-2, 2-3, 3-2 |
| Gerwyn Price (4) | 2-0 | Sebastian Bialecki | 3-0, 3-1 |
| Ryan Joyce | 2-1 | Michael van Gerwen (9) | 2-3, 3-1, 3-1 |
| Luke Woodhouse | 2-1 | Luke Littler (1) | 1-3, 3-2, 3-1 |
| Wessel Nijman (12) | 2-0 | Rob Cross | 3-2, 3-1 |
Six of the eight seeds survived, and three of them only just. Nathan Aspinall needed a last-leg decider against Kevin Doets, who missed three match darts including a wild attempt at the bullseye. Ross Smith lost the opening set 3-0 to Cameron Menzies, who then had two match darts at tops in the second and missed both; Smith won the decider 3-0. Clayton and Krzysztof Ratajski played out the longest match the format allows.
Six of eight ties went the distance
A first-round match here is the best of three sets and every set is the best of five legs, so fifteen legs is the theoretical maximum. Clayton and Ratajski hit it exactly. At the other end, Gerwyn Price was done in seven.
Totalled from the published set-by-set leg scores. Source: Darts World and DartsNews match reports.
Price’s 101.61 was the only average above 100 all night and it came with the shortest working day of the eight winners. He opened with a twelve-darter and a 104 checkout, took the first set 3-0, and though he missed three starting doubles in the second he closed it out with two 120 finishes — treble 20, twenty, double 20 — to win six of the seven legs played.
Van Gerwen’s third straight first-round exit
Van Gerwen has won this tournament six times. He has now lost in its first round three years running, and this was the first of the three in which he took a set.
| Year | Beaten by | Sets |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Daryl Gurney | 0-2 |
| 2025 | Dirk van Duijvenbode | 0-2 |
| 2026 | Ryan Joyce | 1-2 |
Monday followed the pattern of the other two. Van Gerwen edged the first set in a deciding leg, then Joyce started finding finishes — 92, 110 and a 118 to open the second — and took the next two legs to force a decider. In the second leg of that final set Van Gerwen had two darts at double eight and missed both; Joyce punished him with 65 on double 18, then survived a Van Gerwen attempt at 86 to finish on double nine. The doubling gap was the match: Joyce took the chances he was given at the outer ring and Van Gerwen, for the third year running in this tournament, did not.
Joyce is a familiar name for Woodhouse-watchers. The two met in the Baltic Sea Darts Open final in May, which Woodhouse won 8-4 for his second PDC title in twelve days. Both of them are now in the last sixteen of a major, in the same half of the draw, with the top seed gone.
The second round in Littler’s half
All four ties in the top half are set. The second round is the best of five sets, which gives the better scorer more room than Monday’s best of three did.
| Player | Opponent |
|---|---|
| Danny Noppert | Ryan Joyce |
| Jonny Clayton | Wessel Nijman |
| Gerwyn Price | Ross Smith |
| Luke Woodhouse | Nathan Aspinall |
Price against Ross Smith is the pick, and it arrives absurdly early. The two contested the World Series of Darts Finals final in Amsterdam last weekend, where Smith averaged 103.89 and won 11-5. That was Price’s third televised final of 2026 and his third defeat in one. He now gets the man who beat him, in the last sixteen, on the back of the best average of the night.
Woodhouse against Aspinall is the tie that decides which unseeded story continues. Whoever comes through faces the Clayton–Nijman winner in a quarter-final that belonged to Littler on the bracket a day ago.
What Monday changed
Two former winners of this tournament are still standing in the top half, and both are Welsh: Price took the 2020 title and Clayton the 2021 one, beating Price in that final. Aspinall lost the 2022 final to the man Joyce knocked out on Monday.
That is what the double-start format keeps doing to this tournament, and it is why the seedings are a weaker guide here than anywhere else on the calendar. The mechanics are set out in our double-start format explainer. Tuesday night completes the first round with the bottom half, Luke Humphries against Dave Chisnall among the eight ties — the order of play and the full prize breakdown are here, and the rest of the week is on the darts calendar.
Littler leaves Leicester with £7,500 and the £120,000 he won here last October coming off his two-year ranking total. He is still world number one. He is no longer the Grand Prix champion, and he did not get a second match to do anything about it.