{"id":2816,"date":"2025-12-11T22:58:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T22:58:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=2816"},"modified":"2025-12-11T22:58:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T22:58:15","slug":"pdc-world-darts-championship-luke-littler-beats-darius-labanauskas-in-first-round","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=2816","title":{"rendered":"PDC World Darts Championship: Luke Littler beats Darius Labanauskas in first round"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Elsewhere on the opening night, 2023 world champion Michael Smith beat Women&#8217;s World Matchplay winner Lisa Ashton 3-0.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ashton, who had the majority of the crowd on her side, won two of the first three legs but Englishman Smith, 35, then put together a run of seven successive legs on his way to securing a spot in the last 64.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;That first set was nerve-wracking,&#8221; Smith told BBC Radio 5 Live. &#8220;As soon as I walked out, the crowd was on me straight away.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I expected it but I thought if I go 1-0 down, it was going to get worse and worse.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I tried to force things that weren&#8217;t there, but when I took that first set, it was happy days. I started to settle in then and nearly threw it away in the last set, but we&#8217;ll take the win.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">German debutant Arno Merk is through to round two courtesy of a 3-1 win against Belgium&#8217;s Kim Huybrechts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A total of 128 players are competing in the World Championship, up from 96 last year, for an increased first prize of \u00a31m.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The first round is scheduled to conclude on Friday, 19 December, with the final taking place on Saturday, 3 January 2026.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>#PDC #World #Darts #Championship #Luke #Littler #beats #Darius #Labanauskas<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Elsewhere on the opening night&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2817,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[242],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2816"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}