Luke Humphries ended what, by his standards, was a notably long spell without a major title by clinching the World Grand Prix. Wayne Mardle believes the timing could hardly be better, with the key months of the darting year just ahead.
"Yeah, it's not that long in comparison to others, but comparison is the thief of joy, as we say. But for him, it's a relatively barren spell. But that's ended now. And now we can go into the Grand Slam, the Players' Championships and all that," said Mardle on Sky Sports. "And what's after that? Oh yeah, just the Worlds. It can go into the Worlds thinking, right? I'm on top of the world and somebody stop me."
Emma Paton wondered whether the World Grand Prix win could act as a catalyst for the rest of the year. Mardle feels the way Humphries won the title could be especially significant. The World Grand Prix’s set format also returns at the Worlds. "Set play, right? So do it over set play. It registers here, it sticks with you. If they play again in a World Final, I'm just saying it could, something will crop up between them, whether they're having a chat in the practice room about, remember the last time we played sets? And it isn't all about one-upmanship. It's just remembering what happened just, and it's a recency bias, it's remembering what happened just a month or so ago."
"So going into the Worlds, this is a biggie. This is why this, we say that you only need to be good for three months of the year. October, November, December."
Mardle also believes Humphries has developed something he didn’t possess to the same degree a few years ago: the rock-solid belief that he can come back from almost any situation. "Right, I may be wrong. I don't know because I can't read his mind. I don't think he would have hung about in a game to win it three, four years ago. That was sheer belief. That was guts determination, knowing that you can do it. When you've never done it, you don't know if you can. He knows he can. And he can do it from, he can do it against anyone from any position now. He's proven that this evening."
