PDC Stats Analyst Christopher Kempf assesses the top ten PDC stars - based on their last 200 legs played - following the conclusion of the 2024 ProTour season in Leicester last week.
#1 Averages - Damon Heta
#1 OChE - Damon Heta
#1 Doubles - James Wade
#1 171-180 - Luke Littler
#1 99, 101+ Checkout - Michael van Gerwen
After 12 consecutive matches played with a 95 average or better, Damon Heta finished the 2024 Pro Tour series on top of the PDC Form Guide - but will not appear in the Grand Slam of Darts.
For any other tournament, Heta, on the basis of his top-ten Order of Merit rank and multiple ProTour titles, would have easily qualified.
However, since the Australian number one was neither the winner nor the runner-up in any TV event this year, and lost 5-1 to Ryan Joyce in the Tour Card Holder Qualifier for the Grand Slam, he cannot defend the money he earned at the 2022 event.
In Players Championships 29 and 30 he demolished five different players 6-0 or 6-1 with averages as high as 112.73, reaching the quarter-finals in both.
Nevertheless, he surrendered a 4-0 lead to lose to Stephen Bunting in the last eight on Wednesday and missed two darts to extend a match against William O'Connor the next day.
As a player winning nearly 65% of legs against ProTour opponents on current form and surpassing both Luke Humphries and Luke Littler in averages, Heta would be justified in thinking that he would have been one of the favourites to win the event if he had qualified.
The newly-crowned European Champion Ritchie Edhouse has never reached a European Tour final despite more than 30 appearances on tour, but is on a trajectory to soon become a regular threat in those high-stakes championship matches.
As the current most improved player on tour in terms of both averages and OChE rating, Edhouse is now ranked #17 in the PDC in each metric.
Winning his last three matches of the tournament in Dortmund by a combined 32-13 margin pushes him up to a 95 average in the Form Guide for the first time and a 55.74 OChE, ahead of Michael Smith and Rob Cross in this metric of winning efficiency on tour.
Against either player, seeded at the Grand Slam, Edhouse would be a favourite to claim the group winner's bonus.
Reclaiming the #1 doubles accuracy spot in the Form Guide is James Wade, a player who has never been ranked in the top five of the Form Guide.
Wade has also gone without a ranking title for more than two years, but has always remained a threat in any tournament due to the strength of his finishing game.
In a qualifying romp which saw 'The Machine' secure his participation in the Grand Slam for the 17th time, Wade hit more than 70% of his doubles across three matches, winning by a combined margin of 15-1.
Over his last 200 legs played, the three-time Grand Slam finalist has hit nearly 49% of his doubles - a figure which enables him to win matches even when being outscored by his opponents.
Luke Littler, closing in quickly on Michael Smith's 2022 record for the most 180s scored in a season, looks likely to break it unless he is eliminated early in the remaining events of the year.
For most of 2024 he has led the PDC in maxima thrown and has done it again this week with 95, a rate (over 200 legs) nearly double that of the average Tour Card Holder.
Despite this, the teenage superstar now has only the 51st highest doubles percentage among Tour Card Holders and the 6th highest OChE - factors which have contributed to the three first-round exits in consecutive ranking TV events in which Littler has hit only 37% of his doubles.
*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