Luke Humphries remembers the day he felted his last roof. It was 1 March 2018: the day before his first UK Open, his first major tournament as a professional. Roofing was in the blood: his father, Mark, worked on the roofs, and so did his brother, Stuart, and ever since leaving school five years earlier so had he. Start at 6am, home at 5pm. But he had always felt a higher calling. At the end of his shift he clocked off, hoping never to clock on again.
So began a journey that would take Humphries from the roofs of Newbury to the roof of the darting world. On Sunday night, when he begins his world championship campaign, his introduction to the crowd will take a little longer than usual. The new World Grand Prix champion; the new Grand Slam champion; the new Players Championship Finals champion: a remarkable hot streak that has made the 28-year-old the bookmakers’ favourite to end the festive season at the very top of the tree.
There is one thing he wants to be clear about at the very start. “It’s not just happened all of a sudden, you know,” says Humphries, the world No 3. “I’ve been a professional for six years, worked my way up. Last year was when the form started. Four European Tour wins, which really helped my stage presence. When I’m at my best I’m very, very tough to beat. So it’s great for the sport that I’m coming into the fray. Pushing everybody else, making them want to be better.”
The choice of words – “stage presence” – is telling. For if there is one trait that has characterised the rise of Humphries, it has been an almost conspicuous lack of presence. He shuffles on, does the business and shuffles off again, without any of the gimmicks or loud gesticulations employed by other top players.
The scoring is relentless, the doubles reliable – 32 is his favoured out. But until he won his first major title in October, Humphries was one of those players whose excellence seemed almost to slip under the radar in a world of big characters and brash egos. “The nerves that certain players feel don’t creep into my game,” he says. “I keep myself focused. That’s why you don’t see too many celebrations from me. I don’t want to get the adrenaline pumping too much.”
At which point we must, with reluctance, mention the B-word, pretty much the worst insult you can give any darts player. “If I’ve got to be slightly boring to win major titles, like some people say, no problem,” he says. “No one said it before. But as soon as I won the Grand Prix, one person tagged me and all of a sudden everyone was jumping on the bandwagon. If you’re successful, people just want to bring you down.
“Gezzy [Gerwyn] Price gets a lot of hate, but for what reason? I get it for not celebrating enough. He gets it for celebrating too much. So you can’t win either way. Darts fans are fickle. You can’t win with them sometimes. Everyone’s entitled to an opinion and there are some players that do take it to heart. But I’ve got thick skin. There is nothing anybody could say that would hurt or upset me.”
In a sport where self-analysis is derided, where most top players live by the maxim where you simply step up and throw, where any vulnerability is treated as a sign of weakness, Humphries has thrived on the very opposite: knowing himself, thinking about his craft, allowing himself to be vulnerable. Perhaps one of the reasons Humphries is so unbothered by what people say about him on the oche is that he has already experienced far worse.
It all began just before the 2018 world championship, when he started feeling heart palpitations and went to see a cardiologist. All clear. No issues. But the pounding in his chest, the feelings of panic and anxiety, the utter certainty that he was going to have a heart attack, kept returning. In mid-2019, he was leading James Wade in a European Tour event when, as he put it at the time, “my mind just went”. Humphries lost, walked off the stage and decided to quit the sport for good in order to prioritise his mental health.
“Those were hard moments,” he says. “It was at the start of my career, so there wasn’t anything I could use, experience-wise. It got to a point where I would be on the big stage and the anxiety feelings would come on stronger and stronger. The first thing was recognising the triggers and the warnings. And recognising that nothing physically bad was going to happen. It was all in my mind.”
With the help of a cognitive behavioural therapist and the support of his parents, Humphries returned to the sport a wiser and more resilient player. He worked hard on his fitness, losing four stone in weight. “Mentally, it’s made me a stronger person,” he says. “All these experiences that I’ve gone through over the last three to four years have shaped me into the player I am now. What you go through on the big stage is nothing compared to what I’ve already been through.”
In a way Humphries is one of the new breed of players: the kind that sees darts as a vocation and not a hobby, a career to be nurtured rather than a madcap adventure to be ridden all the way to the end. The prize money at the top end of the sport is now life-changing: the winner’s cheque at the world championship is £500,000, the prize fund for the Premier League £1m. Remarkably, Humphries has never been invited to the Premier League despite being No 5 in the world last year. That will change in 2024.
With his reputation secure and a little money in the bank, Humphries has another project on the go. Namely: his father. “Without him, I wouldn’t be where I am today. Early part of my career, he took so much time off work to drive me to Barnsley to play Pro Tours.
“He’s been on the roofs for nearly 40 years now. So I think it’s time to retire him. I’m trying to set him up near where I live and maybe I can pay him a wage and we can spend more time together. He’s done his fair share.”
The young Luke would sit on the sofa with his dad and watch the world championship on television. Now, the whole family – parents, brother, girlfriend Kayley and one-year-old son Rowan – will be in London to watch him. “It does feel like a dream,” he says. “This is something I never expected to happen to me. But it has happened, and it feels natural. Like this is where I belong.”
Does he miss the roofs? “I miss the banter,” he says. “Seeing all the people that I’m still good friends with. But it was always my dream to be a professional darts player. Yeah, I do miss being on the roof. But I’m proud of doing what I do now. And I wouldn’t change it for the world.”
