Lim

World champion Luke Littler beat veteran Paul Lim 6-1 to reach the quarter-finals of the Bahrain Masters.

On his first trip to the oche since retaining his world title at Alexandra Palace on 3 January, Littler put in a statement performance.

The 19-year-old had an average of 106 as he brushed aside 71-year-old Singaporean Lim.

“Not a chance! I will say it now,” England’s Littler replied when asked if he will still be playing into his 70s.

“He’s just class and I wonder when is he going to retire? He still goes very strong in the practice room as well.”

Littler faces Wales’ Gerwyn Price, who saw off Motomu Sakai 6-3, in the last eight. Price was last year’s runner-up in Bahrain after beating Littler in the semi-finals.

Second seed Luke Humphries is also through after a 6-0 win against Abdulla Saeed, while World Championship runner-up Gian van Veen defeated Man Lok Leung 6-2.

Michael van Gerwen is set to play defending champion Stephen Bunting in the quarter-finals.

Lim met Englishman Humphries in the first round of the 2021 World Championship and, on that occasion, Lim was a 3-2 winner.

The odds of a repeat are unlikely, given Humphries – who is 41 years younger than Lim – has gone on to have a spell of nearly two years as world number one and won multiple major titles, including the world crown in January 2024.

“If anything, I’m thankful for Paul winning that game because it changed me as a player and it changed me as a person,” Humphries said after beating Ted Evetts in round one.

“Three months later, I’d lost about four stones and I was in a major final [at the 2021 UK Open]. It helped my career.”

On those comments, Lim said: “To come across a champion who is as humble as him – when he said that, it was really a compliment to me. I’ve got nothing ever bad to say about Luke.

“With every defeat or every win, there is a spark somewhere – you’ve got to find it to spark you in the right direction. I can’t say that loss made him a world champion, but maybe it created that spark within himself to look at something differently and it turned out well for him.

“He is definitely a different Luke Humphries. He was good then, now he is great. It’s an honour to hear him calling me a legend.”