No Tour Card, No Problem: Morris Stops Humphries with a 161

Published 6 Nov 2026

A 161 checkout to win your first PDC ranking title. Against Luke Humphries. If you're going to have a breakthrough, that's quite a way to sign it off.

Tommy Morris beat Humphries 8–5 in Thursday's Players Championship 34 final in Leicester. Sky Sports' finish clip captures the moment that settled it. For me, the appeal is simple: the player with the bigger reputation doesn't get an extra dart when the finish is there.

Morris doesn't hold a Tour Card. The PDC says he is only the sixth player without one to win a ranking title. That makes this more than an unexpected scoreline at the end of a long floor season.

He had already reached the final in Den Bosch the previous week, losing to Chris Dobey. In Leicester he went through Rob Cross and Ricky Evans early on, then beat Wessel Nijman and Jermaine Wattimena before a 7–4 semi-final win over Cristo Reyes. This wasn't one good match followed by a lucky draw.

Humphries had won PC33 on Wednesday and arrived in the final with 13 consecutive match wins across the two events. Stopping that run is impressive enough. Doing it with a title-winning 161 is the bit people will remember.

I wouldn't turn this into a prediction that Morris will win everything next. Darts has a way of making those claims look silly. What I like is that a player outside the full-time Tour Card group has given the established names a very clear problem to solve.

The PDC also confirmed that Wessel Nijman finished top of the Players Championship rankings. Gary Anderson and Michael Smith made the Finals field; Josh Rock and Ryan Joyce missed out. There were plenty of other stories in Leicester, but this last trophy belongs to Morris.

Sources: PDC: PC34 report; Darts World: route to the title; Sky Sports: 161-finish.

Photo: Luke Humphries in Berlin, 3 April 2025 (archive image, not Leicester). CC BY-SA 4.0; resized and re-encoded as JPEG, adaptations under the same license.

Sources

Image: Luke Humphries, Premier League Berlin, 3 April 2025 (archive photo) — Sandro Halank, Wikimedia Commons; resized (source; CC BY-SA 4.0; adapted images under the same license).