Luke Littler continues to captivate the darting world after his historic run to the World Championship final eight months ago.
The runner-up spot trousered the teenager £200k in ranking money and he has since gone on to lift seven titles, including the Premier League.
Despite his success, he is ranked a mere 23 in the world behind the likes of Andrew Gilding, Joe Cullen and Peter Wright.
His low ranking made him ineligible to represent England in their victorious World Cup of Darts campaign, as Luke Humphries and Michael Smith flew the flag as the two highest-ranked players from the nation.
Why Luke Littler is ranked so low
The PDC Order of Merit is a nuanced system.
It’s a two-year rolling order of merit where one ranking point equals one pound in ranking money earned.
The Darts Insider has detailed a full breakdown of the system here.
Littler has only been a professional player for eight months, therefore his rivals have had an additional 16 months of events to accumulate ranking money.
His true ranking won’t be reflected in the order of merit until the conclusion of the 2026 World Championship.
Moreover, three of the 17-year-old’s titles have been non-ranked events; two World Series titles and the lucrative Premier League.
Money earned from these tournaments has not contributed to Littler’s ranking as they are invitational events.
Likely world ranking for Littler after World Championship
Predicting where a player will end the season is difficult with many darts still to be thrown.
However, a rough estimate can be made by studying the provisional post-World Championship order of merit.
This removes money a player earned two years ago and adds on any money they are guaranteed to receive.
For example, current world number two Michael Smith is provisionally set to drop to number 11 in the world.
This is because £485k has been removed from his ranking – £500k removed from winning the 2023 World Championship and £15k added for guaranteed money he will receive for being seeded at the 2025 showpiece event.
Littler has no such worries.
With only eight months of holding a tour card, every penny he earns is profit and he has nothing to defend until 2026.
Provisionally, this puts the Warrington youngster inside the world’s top 10 in January despite only having a year of ranking money.
It is expected though that ‘The Nuke’ will have deep runs in all of the upcoming majors, therefore his provisional ranking of number nine should be a minimum.
The World Number One spot is out of reach given Humphries’ dominance, but the top five is certainly a realistic aim.
If he can land another major and have a similarly impressive run at Alexandra Palace as he did on debut, Littler could be as high as world number two.
This feat would be unprecedented after only 12 months, but the unprecedented is familiar territory for Luke ‘The Nuke’ Littler.