Luke Humphries eventually saw off Joe Cullen at the World Masters (Image: ITV Sport)
Luke Humphries was infuriated by his own stray darts in the final leg of Thursday night’s win over Joe Cullen.
The world No. 1 posted the far superior average but he had a hard time finishing the job in the first round of the World Masters. Humphries was on course for a resounding 3-0 victory when he left himself with only tops to hit in the third set.
But his first attempt went high, his second went low, and then he went wide after switching to double-10 before Cullen took out 80 to stay in the match.
In the fourth set, Humphries hit a brilliant 138 set-up shot to leave tops for the match again. But ‘Cool Hand’ was struck by another bout of wastefulness as he missed double-20, double-10 and double-five in quick succession.
A furious Humphries winced, shook his head and muttered angrily to himself as he stormed past Cullen on the oche. It was only due to ‘The Rockstar’ making a mess of his own checkout that Humphries was given another chance at redemption.
And after six missed darts for the match, he finally took out double-five to haul the result over the line. The 3-1 win set up an intriguing match between Humphries and Josh Rock in the last 16.
The four-day event in Milton Keynes sees the world’s top-24 players compete for the £100,000 top prize against eight lower-ranked challengers who came through the preliminary rounds earlier in the week.
Stephen Bunting is the reigning champion and he kicked off his title defence with a hard-fought win over William Borland, which went to a deciding leg. Elsewhere on the opening night, Rock saw off Jermaine Wattimena, Damon Heta defeated Ross Smith and Gerwyn Price thrashed Florian Hempel.
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