In his latest 'Stat of the Week' column, PDC Stats Analyst Christopher Kempf takes a look at the highest tournament averages in European Tour history, following Luke Humphries' German Darts Grand Prix triumph on Easter Monday.
The stat: Highest tournament averages in European Tour history
The parameters: All European Tour events
The caveats: Tournament winners only
In Munich this past weekend, Luke Humphries was one dart away from breaking a record which has stood for nearly six years.
If 'Cool Hand' had missed 35 doubles instead of 36, or had hit 228 treble 20s instead of 227, he would have established a tournament average record for the European Tour which no player (apart from one) has ever shown the ability to threaten.
Such a thought seems to have been the last thing on his mind, however, as no player Humphries encountered en route to his sixth European Tour title could manage to win more than three legs against him.
Humphries' dominance in Munich not only portends a period of continental dominance from the Newbury-born player, but also raises the question of how higher the bar can be raised for both individual and collective performances on the tour.
To date, only one player has ever been known to average over 110 in a winning tournament campaign - Phil Taylor, at the 2009 European Championship.
Tournament averages over 105, moreover, have historically been the preserve of those two giants of PDC darts, Taylor and Michael van Gerwen.
The presence of only three unique names on the top-ten list of European Tour tournament averages exaggerates the dominance of Van Gerwen on the European Tour.
The Dutchman has won 32% of European Tour events ever staged, but comprises 80% of the top-ten list - which accentuates the difficulty of holding up such a high average over a minimum of 40-50 legs.
If a player were to win every leg of his tournament in 14 darts and not lose any, he would average 107.36 - less than Humphries at the European Grand Prix. Until Monday, only one other winner of 111 European Tour events had ever exceeded that 14-dart standard.
Moreover, it wasn't as though Humphries was facing weak, inexperienced or underperforming opponents.
His combined 33-11 win-loss record of legs in Munich was a result of consistently denying his opponents the chances that they needed, and would have expected to have had against any other opponent, to win the match.
Each of Humphries' five opponents were denied the chance to return to the board after having reached a sub-100 score at least three times, and Humphries hit 15 out of 25 last-dart doubles in the tournament (including 4 out of 5 bullseyes).
Additionally, the opponents' combined averages totalled 98.83 - the second-highest figure ever seen for a European Tour champion, out of 112 events.
Danny Noppert's 106.44 average in the quarter-finals was the 23rd highest losing average ever seen on the European Tour, yet both he and Ryan Joyce, the two opponents to average 100+ against Humphries, lost to him by a decisive scoreline of 6-2.
In what is surely an unintentional statement about the past and future of darts on the part of Humphries, he defeated the two other players appearing in the top-ten tournament averages table by even more resounding margins.
Humphries' romp to victory takes place in a context of enhanced match quality on the European Tour, thanks in no small part to the recent qualification changes which guarantees entry to both the game's elite players and the top ProTour performers over the past 12 months.
It should come as no surprise, then, that the first two European Tour events of 2024 had the second and third-highest combined total tournament averages in European Tour history.
Furthermore, if we were to extend the tournament winners' event averages table further, Luke Littler - in his first-ever European Tour event in Belgium - would rank 17th - ahead of the best winning efforts of all players except Taylor, Price, Van Gerwen and Humphries.
In the earliest years of the European Tour, combined tournament averages were more likely to fall below 90 as they were to exceed it - on five occasions between 2012 and 2015 a player won a tournament with a 92 average for the weekend.
Such an average is unlikely to enable a player to emerge victorious from their first match, and demonstrates that there are no longer any easy paths to the title on the European Tour.
However, if Humphries' 107.51 average is a harbinger of victories to come, his opponents may be soon be in as desperate a position as they were six years ago, when another darting titan filled up his trophy cabinet and demolished all comers.
Follow Christopher on Twitter @ochepedia