The PDC's Statistical Analyst Christopher Kempf looks at how players in this year's Betfred World Matchplay field have fared against the world's top two - Luke Humphries and Luke Littler - so far in 2025...
Two years ago in Blackpool, Luke Humphries was foiled in his fifteenth consecutive attempt to reach a second televised ranking final, falling 17-15 to Jonny Clayton.
Michael Smith was the reigning world number one and World Champion, and for other than a few connoisseurs of darts' youth scene, the name Luke Littler was completely unknown.
Rarely if ever has darts' existing power structure been so completely overthrown in such a short period of time.
Since the 2023 final won by Nathan Aspinall, Humphries and Littler have both won the Premier League and World Championships, combined to win 10 of the 14 televised ranking events, and become - by extremely wide margins - the world number one and world number two.
As the wheel of fortune has raised up the two Lukes, it has also brought down Smith, who for the first time in more than a decade failed to qualify for the World Matchplay.
The expectations for any aspiring World Matchplay champion are clear: in order to take home the Phil Taylor trophy, such a player will need to defeat Littler or Humphries at some point during his campaign, and likely both.
Given that Littler has won 74% of his singles matches thus far in 2025, and Humphries has won 70%, and knowing nothing about the quality of their opponents, the probability that both players will lose a match is a remote 7.8%.
In the Premier League, ostensibly a collection of darts' most potent scorers and ruthless finishers, the two won 40 of the 53 matches they did not play against one another.
To succeed where most of darts' veterans and champions have failed, it will not be enough to have compiled an excellent statistical record overall.
Additional courage will be required to overcome the combined power of the "Cool Hand Nuke".
From the conclusion of the 204/25 World Championship onwards, the PDC's best players have mostly failed to keep up with the Lukes' scoring.
Littler is the only player in the 32-man field to leave a score of less than 170, on average, after nine darts thrown: his first-round opponent Ryan Searle has needed ten darts to score as many points as Littler does in nine.
Humphries' seasonal average of 99.44 is not far behind; only six other players in the entire field have managed an average within two points of that.
Josh Rock is the most powerful scorer in the PDC not named Luke, and reaches an average score of 173 after three visits to the board (in comparison to Humphries' 174), but in his one confrontation with Humphries so far this year averaged less than 95, winning only two of 10 legs in a lopsided defeat.
Three players other than Humphries and Littler have won more than 70% of their matches of 2025, but have only translated those match wins into victories on the floor while their opponents take home bigger trophies and larger cash prizes.
Cameron Menzies (71%), Ross Smith (71%) and Damon Heta (72%) have each claimed at least one Players Championship title and rank within the top 10 of the ProTour Order of Merit, even without winning on the European Tour this year, but that success is arguably attributable to not having faced Humphries or Littler.
Smith, Heta and Menzies have a combined 0-6 record against the two. All three have lost deciding legs to the two leading talents of darts, and in so doing have missed at least one match dart.
Of the veteran World Champions, few have recaptured their old magic when confronting the new kids on the block.
Michael van Gerwen has a 3-8 win-loss record against the two and has completed fewer than two-thirds of his checkouts when given at least two darts at a double.
Rob Cross has compiled an impressive 101.58 average versus Humphries and Littler, but fared even worse in the end, winning just 36 of 88 legs en route to a 1-8 record.
Only Gerwyn Price can claim to have held his own: despite playing about as well as he would have done against all other opponents, Price achieved early success in the Premier League and the World Series, eventually accumulating 8 wins in 14 matches.
Even in defeat, Price made his mark with a nine-dart finish on Night Ten of the Premier League, stealing Littler's thunder in an otherwise disappointing 6-3 loss.
The most formidable opposition to the Lukes' dominance has not come from their Premier League competition, however.
With runner's-up earnings to defend from the 2023 World Matchplay, Jonny Clayton has more at stake in the 2025 tournament than most, but has come away from his recent clashes with Humphries and Littler with impressive results - if not with trophy in hand, than with enough sweat on his rivals' foreheads to call into question the invincibility of youth.
At the World Masters, Clayton crushed Littler's A-game (a 108.50 average) and mounted a four-set comeback in the final with Humphries that nearly succeeded, later avenging that loss on the European Tour.
No player outside of the Premier League has fought more legs against the last two World Champions than Clayton, and no player has won so many of them.
The Welsh number one normally completes 74% of his finishes from 2-60, but against Littler or Humphries has completed 89%, with only three misses in 27 attempts.
Luke Humphries is probably less than delighted to be facing the Netherlands' greatest young player, Gian van Veen, to whom he lost 8-3 in the final of Players Championship Six.
Rising to the challenge of the Humphries-Littler duopoly, 'The Giant' has a 100.66 average against them and an astonishing 23% completion rate of ton-plus checkouts, both substantial improvements on his day-to-day form.
These statistical achievements have translated into three wins in four matches, and with the memory of a deciding-leg elimination at last year's World Matchplay, Van Veen is poised as no other player in the tournament to achieve a famous upset.
If, as many expect, the long-run strengths of Humphries and Littler prevail, who would prevail in a best-of-35 all-Luke final?
Advantage Littler: the teenaged World Champion has won five of nine contests with Humphries, completing ton-plus checkouts at quadruple the rate of 'Cool Hand Luke' and besting his average in head-to-head matchups by more than two points.
Yet Humphries has remained within striking distance throughout their series thanks to disciplined small-combination checkouts.
In truth, the 2025 record is inconclusive, and suggests that contests between the two men will remain on a knife edge.
If individual players in the World Matchplay field have notched a win against Luke Humphries or Luke Littler, they have largely done so in best-of-11 contests, in which a few sub-par legs can be decisive.
Such lapses matter less in the longer formats of the World Matchplay, and more sustained efforts will be required to upset the top two seeds.
The unlikeliness of such feats is the principal reason why Humphries and Littler, the undisputed in-form players of 2025, have less to fear from their competition than ever before.
Follow Christopher on Twitter @ochepedia