Grand Slam of Darts 2024: Does winning in Wolverhampton correlate with winning the World Darts Championship?
Sky Sports' Megan Wellens takes a look at how important the Grand Slam is with the Worlds around the corner; next live darts on Sky Sports is the World Darts Championship, starting on Sunday December 15 live on Sky Sports Darts through to the final on Friday January 3
Monday 18 November 2024 17:34, UK
Within seconds of winning the Grand Slam of Darts, Luke Littler was installed as the bookmakers' favourite to win the World Darts Championship.
But does success in Wolverhampton necessarily lead to success at Alexandra Palace?
Of course, the basic rule of sporting form is that if you win a major title in November before heading to the World Darts Championship the following month, live on Sky Sports, you are going to be firing and feeling confident.
You have just shown you can hold your nerve under pressure, you know how to dig deep and fire in the winning darts.
Now you just have to do it all again. Simple, right?
So what effect, if any, does one victory have on the other? Is it just that winning a big tournament creates a change in the player's confidence level and there is a correlation between the two big wins?
Or is it an example of cause and effect? Would a player simply not have won the Worlds without winning the Grand Slam first?
The answer to this probably varies from player to player. Luke Humphries and Michael Smith would say that winning majors in the lead-up to their maiden Worlds wins were vital.
Others would simply say showing form in one leads to form in the other just a few weeks later.
Then there is the situation in which there seems to be no link between the two at all.
What is clear, though, is that if you pick up a Grand Slam victory, people believe your chances of leaving Ally Pally in January on top of the darting world heighten.
Let's take a look at the history of Grand Slam winners and what happened the following month.
Phil Taylor (2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2014)
Taylor is the most decorated player in darting history and the Grand Slam is a stage he loved, winning six times in seven years.
He won the World Championship on 16 occasions with 13 of those wins coming before the Grand Slam was first held in 2007.
But only two of his six Grand Slam wins led to subsequent victories in the World Championship.
Scott Waites (2010)
Waites won two BDO World titles in 2013 and 2016 but never won a World Championship as a PDC player. His 16-12 Grand Slam victory in 2010 against James Wade had no effect on his Worlds-winning chances.
Raymond van Barneveld (2012)
Van Barneveld has one PDC World Darts title to his name, which came in 2007 in a 7-6 victory over Taylor, but this was five years prior to his maiden 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 had won the Grand Slam in the run-up.
This was when he claimed a 16-8 win over Wade in the 2016 Grand Slam and then went on to defeat Anderson 7-3 at the Worlds in January 2017.
His other World Championship wins came in 2014, a year prior to his first Grand Slam victory, and 2019, when he did not feature in the final of the Grand Slam in November 2018.
Gerwyn Price (2018, 2019, 2021)
Price is a player that loves the Grand Slam, picking up victory on three different occasions, making him the joint-second most decorated player in the tournament's history.
However, his Grand Slam wins did not line up with his Worlds win, which came in 2021. He did not pick up victory in the Grand Slam 2020, which was won by Jose de Sousa.
Jose de Sousa (2020)
De Sousa has not progressed past the last 16 at the Worlds and so when he won the Grand Slam in 2020, he did not capitalise and turn his momentum into glory at Ally Pally.
Indeed, he went out in the third round after entering the tournament as the 14th seed.
Michael Smith (2022)
Over the past couple of years, the trend really starts to come into force that the Grand Slam winner goes on a run at the Worlds.
Smith picked up a huge major win at the Grand Slam of Darts in 2022, defeating Nathan Aspinall in a dominant 16-5 win.
That was a milestone moment in his career and after losses in the final of the World Darts Championship in 2019 and 2022, he finally won in 2023 in a 7-4 classic against Van Gerwen, hitting an incredible nine-darter on the way.
Luke Humphries (2023)
In a similar story to Smith, Humphries picked up what was touted as a crucial Grand Slam win on the way to being crowned world champion.
In his second major in the space of 42 days, Humphries defeated Rob Cross 16-8 to keep his run going.
This then led him onto the Worlds in which he came out on top 7-4 against Luke Littler, cementing himself as the sport's best.
Now, it is time to see if Littler follows the path of Smith and Humphries.
Luke Littler (2024)
Will Littler continue the recent pattern? He will be hoping so after becoming the latest name to lift the Eric Bristow Trophy following a sensational 16-3 victory over Martin Lukeman, winning 15 legs in a row.
It was Littler's first major TV ranking win that sees him move up to fifth on the PDC Order of Merit and, as the favourite heading to Ally Pally, he will want to add the biggest trophy to his haul.
When asked if he thinks he can continue the pattern, Littler said: "We will see." That we will, live on Sky Sports this December.
So is there a link between the two tournaments? Both of the last two world champions were reigning Grand Slam champions, so there is a recent trend.
But in 17 editions of the Grand Slam, only five winners have gone on to win the World Championship, which works out at as a success rate around 30 per cent.
That suggests the odds are against Littler... but this is a man who likes to defy the odds!
How can you watch?
Attention now turns to the 2025 PDC World Darts Championship, beginning on December 15, as the darts calendar continues to provide excitement throughout the year - and you can enjoy the very best here live on Sky Sports.
