By Dylan MacIsaac
In no particular order (apart from one), let’s take a look at the four players who have stood out from the crowd in 2025. Here is 180UK’s ‘Mount Rushmore’ of Darts for the past 12 months.
Josh Rock
The Northern Irishman has been a steady player since earning his tour card almost four years ago. Most would relish the career he had had up until this year, but ‘steady’ wasn’t what we expected of Rock coming off the junior circuit with a win at the World Youth Championships back in 2022.
I’m sure I don’t need to remind anyone who has won that title since, but many assumed that his career would go the way that a certain Luke Littler’s has. Whilst he can’t quite match the accolades of ‘The Nuke’, Rock has cemented himself in the upper echelons of darts, boasting the third highest year-long average of anyone on the circuit with a staggering 98.10.
Winning the World Cup alongside Daryl Gurney proves to any naysayers that he knows how to get over the line, and the steady evolution he has displayed thus far should make him a force for years to come.
Luke Humphries
No Mount Rushmore could be complete without the two Lukes. Humphries is already fifth on the all-time list of major wins with eight, with two coming this year in the Premier League and World Masters. The never-ending battle between him and Luke Littler continued this year, with the two effectively forming their own mini tour a league above everyone else. His accolades need no explanation, but a year-long average of 98.50 tells you all you need to know about why ‘Cool Hand’ is a shoe in for any list.
Gian Van Veen
‘The Giant’ has certainly lived up to the name in 2025 – his imposing physical presence no longer the only means of striking fear into his opponents. He picked up his first major title at the European Open back in October, defeating Luke Humphries in the final by way of a last leg decider and followed it up by defending his World Youth Championship against Beau Greaves last month.
He places fifth on the year with an average of 97.91, and the eye test mirrors the statistics with Van Veen being one of the circuits most scintillating players to watch. His tender age of just 23 could well match the years this phenom has left at the top of the game, a scary prospect for fellow competitors but a tantalizing one for us viewers.
Luke Littler
If Josh Rock and Gian Van Veen are young phenoms, then Luke Littler is THE young phenom. Few superlatives remain unsaid when discussing ‘The Nuke’. He finally cracked the elusive World no.1 spot after a whole nine months of being old enough to have a drink after a match, has the fourth most majors in history with nine after less than two years on the PDC (six of which were this year), and is the reigning World Champion after becoming the youngest to ever win the title.
He is also one of just five players to have ever completed darts’ ‘Triple Crown’, which involves winning the World Championship, the Premier League and the World Matchplay. To rattle off all his achievements would make for wholly uninteresting reading, but let’s just say that a place on Mount Rushmore may be discrediting them. If he can maintain this trajectory, he may need a whole separate mountain of his own.
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