Colourful nicknames are synonymous with darts. Picking a catchy moniker is as big a part of the sport as choosing your arrows.
But what happens when two players pick the name nickname or something similar? That was the issue facing Paddy Power World Championship favourite Luke Humphries and fellow tour professional Martin Lukeman.
A few years back, the pair were playing for more than just a trophy or prize money, they were playing for the right to keep their nickname. Their aliases weren’t quite identical – ‘Cool Hand Luke’ vs ‘Cool Man Luke’ – but they were considered close enough that one of them needed to be known as something else.
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“I played Luke on the Challenge Tour and he’d changed his name to ‘Cool Hand Luke’ so we said whoever wins this match gets to keep the name, and he did me!” recalled Lukeman.
Humphries recalled: “That was about five or six years ago. I think it was the quarter-finals on the Challenge Tour. He was called ‘[Cool] Man Luke’ and I was called ‘[Cool] Hand Luke’. We both realised we couldn’t go on with the same sort of nickname. So he offered to play me for the nickname, which I did and I think I beat him 5-0 or 5-1.
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“If it wasn’t for that game, I might not have been called ‘Cool Hand Luke’, but it was fate that I was. The nickname has stuck with me now and it suits my style of play.”
Forced to come up with something else, Lukeman promptly changed his nickname to ‘Smash’ after it was suggested by his wife. He even has a tattoo of the word.
Lukeman is out of the 2024 Worlds after losing to Damon Heta in the second round. Meanwhile, Humphries, the winner of three major tournaments in the run-up to Ally Pally, faces German Ricardo Pietreczkoin in the third round tonight (Wednesday)
