Grand Slam Darts: Does success in Wolverhampton help you win the World Darts Championship? | Darts News

Within seconds of winning the 2024 Grand Slam of Darts, Luke Littler has been installed as the bookies’ favorite to win the World Darts Championship.

But does success in Wolverhampton require success at Alexandra Palace? In Littler’s case, it is.

Of course, the basic rule of sporting form is that if you win a major title in November before you go to the World Darts Championship next month, live Ski Sportsyou will shoot, feel confident, and one of the names will be hot.

You just showed that you can hold your nerve under pressure, you know how to dig deep and shoot the winning darts.

Now you just have to do it all over again. Simple, right?

So what impact, if any, does one win have on another? Does just winning a major tournament create a change in a player’s confidence level and is it a correlation between two major wins?

Or is it an example of cause and effect? Wouldn’t a player just win a World Cup without first winning a Grand Slam?

The answer to this probably varies from player to player. Luke Humphries, Michael Smith and Littler can all say that winning majors ahead of their first Worlds wins was vital.

Others would simply say it’s a case of form and maintaining it from one to the next a few weeks later.

Then there is a situation where there seems to be no connection between the two.

What is clear, however, is that if you win a Grand Slam, people believe your chances of leaving Alli Palli in January on top of the darts world will increase.

Let’s take a look at the history of Grand Slam winners and what happened next month.

Phil Taylor (2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2014)

Taylor is the most decorated player in darts history, and the Grand Slam is a stage he has loved, winning six times in seven years. He won the World Championship 16 times, 13 of which he won before the Grand Slam was held for the first time in 2007.

But only two of his six Grand Slam victories led to subsequent World Championship wins.

Scott Waits (2010)

Waites won two BDO World titles in 2013 and 2016, but has never won a World Championship as a PDC player. His 16-12 Grand Slam victory against James Wade in 2010 did not affect his chances of winning the world championship.

Raymond van Barneveld (2012)

Van Barneveld has one PDC world darts title, which came in 2007 in a 7-6 win over Taylor, but that was five years before his first Grand Slam win.

That came in 2012 in a 16-14 thriller against the ‘Green Machine’.

Michael van Gerwen (2015, 2016, 2017)

Van Gerwen has won the World Darts Championship three times in his illustrious career and on one of those occasions he previously won a Grand Slam.

That was when he beat Wade 16-8 at the 2016 Grand Slam and then beat Anderson 7-3 at the World Championships in January 2017.

His other World Cup wins were in 2014, a year before his first Grand Slam win, and in 2019, when he failed to appear in a Grand Slam final in November 2018.

Gerwyn Price (2018, 2019, 2021)

Price is a Grand Slam favorite, winning on three separate occasions, making him the joint second most decorated player in the tournament’s history.

However, his Grand Slam wins did not match his Worlds win, which came in 2021. He did not win the 2020 Grand Slam, which was won by Jose de Sousa.

Jose de Sousa (2020)

De Sousa did not advance in the last 16 at Worlds and so when he won the Grand Slam in 2020 he did not capitalize and turn his momentum into glory at the Ali Pali.

Indeed, he exited in the third round after entering the tournament as the 14th seed.

Michael Smith (2022)

In the last few years, the trend is really starting to take hold of the Grand Slam winner making a run at the World Cup.

Smith claimed a major victory at the 2022 Grand Slam of Darts, defeating Nathan Aspinall in a dominant 16-5 victory.

It was a turning point in his career and after losing the World Darts Championship finals in 2019 and 2022, he finally won in 2023 in a classic 7-4 match against Van Gerwen, hitting an incredible nine-dart en route.

Luke Humphreys (2023)

In a similar story to Smith, Humphries picked up what was considered a crucial Grand Slam victory en route to becoming world champion.

In his second major in 42 days, Humphries defeated Rob Cross 16-8 to continue his streak.

This then led him to Worlds where he came out on top 7-4 against Luke Littler, cementing himself as the best in the sport.

Now it’s time to see if Littler follows in the footsteps of Smith and Humphries.

Luke Littler (2024)

Then, of course, Littler continued the recent pattern. After becoming the latest name to lift the Eric Bristow trophy with a sensational 16-3 victory over Martin Lukeman, making it 15 games in a row, he then claimed his maiden Alli Pally glory with a storming victory over Michael van Gerwen.

The Grand Slam was Littler’s first major win in the TV rankings which saw him climb to fifth in the PDC Order of Merit, and now he has skyrocketed even further with the world No.1 in his sights.

He goes into this year’s Grand Slam as the man to beat and is looking to join Taylor, Van Gerwen and Price as the only players to defend their crown.

So is there a connection between the two tournaments? The last three years would say so.

But in 17 Grand Slam editions, only six winners have won the World Cup, a success rate of about 35 percent.

That suggests the odds are against whoever is champion in 2025, but the trends are in their favor.

How can you watch?

Grand Slam Darts is live every day Ski Sports from November 8 to 16 as the high season heats up.

Attention then turns to PDC World Darts Championship 2026which kicks off on December 11, as the darts calendar continues to deliver excitement throughout the year – and you can enjoy the best of it here live on Ski Sports.

Ski Sports will once again be home to the World Cup of Darts, World Matchplay, World Grand Prix, Grand Slam of Darts and more! Stream darts and more top sports with NOW