World Darts Championship: Luke Humphries meets Paul Lim – a 71-year-old

On December 19, 2020, a little pre-Christmas door opened for darts professional Luke Humphries, even if it looked at the time as if the gate was closing. On this memorable Friday five years ago, the Brit experienced perhaps the most defining darts game of his career: World Championship in London, round one was underway in the famous Alexandra Palace, and the already famous Humphries was the huge favorite after two previous quarter-final appearances. But the then 25-year-old arrow throwing youth found his master, or rather: his old master.

At the age of 66, his life began to briefly interest a lot of people: Paul Lim’s life, which has now lasted more than 71 years and includes, among other things, almost half a century as a darts player. With a highlight in December 2020, when Lim defeated his first-round opponent Humphries 3-2 after being 0-2 down, inflicting one of his greatest sporting defeats on the Brit. A defeat that changed him, Humphries said about himself years later. Not to say: improved.

Major setbacks should be viewed with caution because some people are broken by them. Humphries can claim to have chosen a different path. “There is no revenge in darts,” he said recently about the defeat against Lim, after he had confidently mastered round one a few days ago. “If anything, I’m grateful to Paul for winning that match because it changed me as a player and as a person,” said Humphries, who once had a lot more weight to carry on stage. “Three months later I lost around 25 kilos, so it helped my career.”

The two meet again in London’s Alexandra Palace, two days before Christmas Eve. Humphries is 30, Lim is more than twice as old. One was crowned world champion two years ago, the other once threw the first World Cup ninth-darter. Humphries is ranked second on the global leaderboard, Lim doesn’t even appear in the ranking. It is not without reverence that the European is called “Cool Hand Luke” because he is as cool as the icy wind in front of the target. The Asian calls himself “Grandpa Lim,” and right now everyone likes him. Because he recently smiled on the Ally Pally stage as if there was not a target in front of him, but the rising sun.

One is examined microscopically, the other very few people really know.

Lim has never revealed much about himself. His darts career began alongside training to be a chef

Paul Lim has never revealed much about himself. That he grew up in Singapore as the son of a jewelry dealer and has 20 siblings, but there could also be more. And that at the age of 20 he left Singapore behind and moved to England. In the 1970s, Lim lived in Chiswick, West London, where he began training as a chef and, above all, playing darts – the pub and the disc are said to have been not far from his apartment. So began the long journey of a young man who would turn out to be a globetrotter – and start a darts career in 1981.

After six years in the motherland of precise arrow throwing, he returned to Singapore, followed by stops in Papua New Guinea, the USA and Hong Kong – countries that he represented at the World Darts Championships; first with the British Darts Organization (BDO), then with the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC), which is now commonly understood as the world darts association. In London he is taking part in the Darts World Cup for the 28th time; he made it to the round of 16 at the PDC in 2001. Lim never won major tournaments, but history will remember him as the man who achieved the greatest possible darts feat for the first time at a World Cup: in 1990 he threw nine perfect darts into the target, the first nine-darter at a World Championship. At least that’s what the oldest participant in this year’s tournament has over one of the best.

And of course it’s sounds like these that are often heard in the Ally Pally: “A great guy, a gentleman and a great player,” Lim said about Humphries in the Ally Pally a few days ago after he had survived round one. His next duelist is “very good, but can be beaten”. Already against his opening opponent, the Swede Jeffrey de Graaf, who is 36 years his junior, he “felt that I had the crowd on my side,” said Lim. This or something similar could also happen against Humphries, the London palace audience often values ​​extraordinary characters more than home favorites.

In any case, the nine-darter hero of old will enter the stage as the maximum possible outsider in the duel with the world number two. He made history again, for the second time: His 3-1 win against de Graaf makes Paul Lim the oldest person in the history of arrow throwing to win a World Cup game.