PDC Stats Analyst Christopher Kempf assesses the sport’s top ten stars – based on their last 200 legs played – ahead of the 2026 BOYLE Sports World Grand Prix in Leicester. #1 Averages – Gerwyn Price#1 OChE – Gerwyn Price#1 Doubles – Jonny Clayton#1 171-180 – Luke Littler#1 99, 101+ Checkout – Cristo Reyes Luke […]
PDC Stats Analyst Christopher Kempf assesses the sport’s top ten stars – based on their last 200 legs played – ahead of the 2026 BOYLE Sports World Grand Prix in Leicester.
#1 Averages – Gerwyn Price
#1 OChE – Gerwyn Price
#1 Doubles – Jonny Clayton
#1 171-180 – Luke Littler
#1 99, 101+ Checkout – Cristo Reyes
Luke Littler’s defeat at the World Series of Darts Finals is the cause of his dropping out of the #1 form position for the first time in six months.
With Littler’s average coming out of August well above 100 as the benchmark for his performance in the TV tournament-heavy autumn, his World Series averages in the high-90s, while respectable, are nowhere near his extraordinary figures from Blackpool.
Consequently, Gerwyn Price, who dispatched Jonny Clayton and James Wade en route to the final in Amsterdam, is now the World #1 in both averages and OChE.
The margins between Price and Littler are narrow, with Price on course to win only one additional leg against ProTour opponents for every 300 legs played, but Price’s 140-hitting and superior set-up play allows him to beat Littler’s average by just under one point.
It remains to be seen whether Littler’s slight drop in form could be attributed only to the hostile crowd in the Netherlands, but even without that distraction it is clear that Littler’s all-conquering form of July can’t be expected from him in every leg.
In addition to the small matter of winning £100,000 and the World Series Finals, Ross Smith has won 100% of his last 200 legs in 21 darts or fewer, the best figure of any player in the PDC, and has risen to the world’s #3 doubles hitter.
While Smith remains outside the top 10 in both averages and OChE, the gap between the Form #1 and his rivals has shrunk significantly.
Only two and a half points in averages separate Smith from Littler, and with multiple players experiencing swings of more than two points up or down, a further performance like Smudger’s could easily put him on the same level as the World Champion.
The most improved player of September is Jermaine Wattimena, who has mounted a serious challenge to Wessel Nijman for the title of the best Dutch player in darts.
On the back of a successful Players Championship campaign on home soil, which saw him reach a quarter-final and a semi-final on consecutive days, Wattimena’s OChE leapt more than eight points in the past two weeks.
All of Wattimena’s young Dutch rivals are having a superb September, with Kevin Doets, Gian van Veen and Wessel Nijman all vaulting ahead of their compatriots Dirk van Duijvenbode and Michael van Gerwen, both of whom now find themselves outside the top 32 averages in professional darts.
Double 16 has taken centre stage in recent editions of the World Grand Prix, and no player is better positioned to succeed in situations where accuracy on that target is of the utmost importance than Jonny Clayton, for more than a month now the #1 doubles hitter in the PDC.
Clayton’s only title of 2026 came in a World Series event in New Zealand, but ‘The Ferret’ is by no means the sport’s heaviest scorer, and in normal 501 he cannot play to his strengths in the same way that he can in a double-start event.
Clayton hits more than 50% of his double 16s and 46% of his doubles overall, an ideal place for one’s game to be just before the World Grand Prix.
*OChE (Ordinal Checkout Efficiency) explained:
OChE is a metric designed to evaluate the efficiency at which players convert their averages into legs won.
The statistic is the % of legs a player would expect to win on the ProTour, calculated from a weighted average of 4,5, 6 & 7 visit checkout rates.
Follow Christopher on Twitter @ochepedia