Michael van Gerwen earned a classic 6-5 win over 18-year-old world champion Luke Littler on the first night of the Premier League of Darts.
The Dutchman's win was made all the more remarkable by the fact he was able to defy Littler's 116.7 match average to taste victory in Belfast.
Thursday's highly anticipated showdown in Northern Ireland, a repeat of January's world championship final, gained an extra layer of intrigue following Van Gerwen's criticism of Littler's timekeeping after the darts prodigy kept his fellow players waiting ahead of a photoshoot in the city on Wednesday.
It had seemed as though Littler had seized momentum in the contest at the SSE Arena after he found the bullseye for a 161 checkout to move 2-1 ahead in the match.
The two players swapped breaks before "MVG" took out 114 to move 4-3 ahead.
Van Gerwen missed three match darts with the scores at 5-4, allowing Littler to nail double 20 and take the tie to a deciding leg.
The 35-year-old settled any lingering nerves by starting the deciding leg with a 180 before tasting victory via the bed of double eight.
The two players seemed to put aside any lingering bad feeling as Littler held Van Gerwen's arm aloft to he crowd and congratulated him on a well-earned win.
Luke Humphries eventually prevailed on night one with a 6-1 victory over Chris Dobey. Dobey had squeezed past Van Gerwen in the semifinal but was no match for "Cool Hand Luke" who had an 86% success rate on his doubles and hit three 100-plus checkouts.
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