{"id":7747,"date":"2026-03-22T23:16:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T23:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/7747\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T23:16:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T23:16:07","slug":"luke-humphries-wins-in-belgium-as-luke-littlers-hat-trick-bid-ends-early-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/7747\/","title":{"rendered":"Luke Humphries wins in Belgium as Luke Littler\u2019s hat-trick bid ends early"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a data-ylk=\"elm:icon;slk:Press Association;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pressassociation.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><img alt=\"Press Association\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"136\" height=\"40\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"pr-2.5 max-w-[150px] max-h-[40px] min-[601px]:max-w-[115px]\" style=\"color:transparent;max-width:auto;max-height:100%\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/bc165100-a8cb-11ed-9dbd-b56a2a5b7658.png\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Press Association Sport Reporters<\/p>\n<p>Sun, 22 March 2026 at 10:48 pm UTC<img alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1242\" height=\"699\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"standard-img w-full w-full h-auto\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/48ae3b6f87760fae3369acf72dee3c39.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>World number two Luke Humphries joked his win at the Belgian Darts Open would help in his bid to become \u201cthe second-best player in the world\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Double defending champion Luke Littler\u2019s shock 6-5 exit to Dutchman Niels Zonneveld in the last 16 paved the way for Humphries to clinch his ninth European Tour title with an 8-6 win over Jonny Clayton.<\/p>\n<p>The 31-year-old scraped past Chris Dobey 6-5 in the quarter-finals but destroyed Michael van Gerwen 7-2 in the semis.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s one of them things where I feel my game\u2019s been there, then it\u2019s not, then it is,\u201d Humphries said on stage after his win.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUsually in those circumstances I close the game out a lot better, but when you\u2019re not winning as much they become harder and you feel the nerves.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m just dedicated and working so hard to push every dart player and be the best version of myself.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m going to keep trying to be the second-best player in the world \u2013 apparently.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Press Association Sport Reporters Sun, 22 March 2026 at 10:48 pm UTC World number two Luke Humphries joked&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7748,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[7,5592,5593,5591,1666,1519,1358,5594],"class_list":{"0":"post-7747","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-belgium","8":"tag-belgium","9":"tag-chris-dobey","10":"tag-defending-champion","11":"tag-european-tour","12":"tag-jonny-clayton","13":"tag-luke-humphries","14":"tag-michael-van-gerwen","15":"tag-niels-zonneveld"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@be\/116275379094437235","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}