PDC Stats Analyst Christopher Kempf assesses the top ten PDC stars - based on their last 200 legs played - following this week's Players Championship double-header in Wigan.
#1 Averages - Luke Littler
#1 OChE - Luke Littler
#1 Doubles - Damon Heta
#1 171-180 - Luke Littler
#1 99, 101+ Checkout - Damon Heta
Michael van Gerwen has won at least one Players Championship every year since 2012, and has continued that streak in 2024 with victory at Players Championship 21.
Yet though he was - for most of this past decade - by far the strongest player on form in the PDC, even a successful Players Championship campaign leaves him in the statistical wake of a new generation of players.
Van Gerwen, after dispatching his opponents by a combined margin in legs of 45-21, has an outstanding 45.7% doubles accuracy over the span of his last 200 legs and has a higher average over that period than the reigning World Champion over his last 200 legs.
But even these achievements are underwhelming in comparison with the record-smashing performances of his peers, and it is a clear sign of the end of his dominance that even after such a victory, Van Gerwen has only the seventh highest average in the PDC.
With 115 maxima in 200 legs, Luke Littler is continuing to make his debut season an unprecedented display of scoring virtuosity.
One week on the Players Championship circuit saw the teenager throw 49 maxima; with nearly 600 180s thrown thus far in 2024, Littler is on course to become the first player to have 1000 such visits in a year.
His current Form Guide-topping 115 visits of 180 is double the output of the majority of PDC pros over the same period, and is the highest ever recorded in Form Guide history.
Historically, scoring in this fashion has not been strongly correlated with winning matches or tournaments, but Littler's 15 consecutive match wins make it clear that scoring of this magnitude makes a player almost unbeatable.
Another player making Form Guide history is Damon Heta, the first player of the Tour Card era to hit a majority of his doubles in his last 200 legs. His 50.2 checkout percentage is so far ahead of MvG (in the #2 position) that the Aussie is hitting nearly one additional double for every 20 attempts than the Dutch number one.
Against Gerwyn Price on Wednesday, Heta couldn't miss, completing checkouts of 65, 84, 84, 101, 110 and 133, hitting six out of six doubles with the last dart in hand.
Yet even this level of accuracy gives lie to the adage 'doubles for dough', as Heta, while enjoying the most clinical finishing of his career, has only two PDC titles to his name this year while Littler, currently ranked #41 in the PDC for his 38.7% checkout percentage, has nine.
The man who cut Heta's run short on Wednesday, Ritchie Edhouse, is still searching for his first Players Championship title after nearly ten years of PDC darts.
However, his performance in Wigan marks him as one of the most improved players in the PDC, as the tour's focus turns to World Championship qualification and seeding.
A boost of 5.4 points to his OChE rating in just over a week gives Edhouse - after missing match darts against Dave Chisnall to reach the final of Players Championship 21 - a place in the top half of the Form Guide once more.
Currently in position to qualify for Alexandra Palace as the #1 qualifier on the ProTour Order of Merit, Edhouse could be one of the seeded players' most dangerous opponents if he continues in this vein.
*OChE (Ordinal Checkout Efficiency) explained:
OChE is a metric designed to evaluate the efficiency at which players convert their averages into legs won.
The statistic is the % of legs a player would expect to win on the ProTour, calculated from a weighted average of 4,5, 6 & 7 visit checkout rates.
Follow Christopher on Twitter @ochepedia