When a dart player lands a nine-darter the room takes a breath. When a 14-year-old does it in a competitive match, the conversation switches from “wow” to “watch him.” That’s exactly what happened this week when Renfrew schoolboy Mitchell Lawrie produced perfection — a 174, 180, 147 sequence to complete a nine-dart leg — during an Amateur Darts Circuit event at The County in Cambuslang, Glasgow, instantly putting himself on the radar of players, pundits and fans alike.
Perfection like that rarely arrives in isolation. Lawrie’s nine-darter arrived on the back of a remarkable run of breakthroughs over the last few months: he’s already collected senior and youth honours on the WDF circuit, including a stunning senior Welsh Open victory and a dominant British Open final where he averaged north of 102. Those results, combined with the perfect leg at the Vault event, have many drawing parallels with another teenage phenomenon in the sport — Luke Littler — who burst into the game as a teenager and rewrote youth records.
What makes Lawrie’s rise feel different is how quickly he has moved from local talent to headline act. Friends, family and fellow competitors point to the hours of practice he put in during the COVID lockdown — a period he describes as the time he “started playing a lot, maybe six or seven hours a day” before settling into a two to two-and-a-half hour daily routine that he now calls his baseline. “Then I stopped for a bit, but when we moved house, I started playing again, and that’s when I realised how good I was, and I started doing it competitively,” Lawrie told reporters, neatly encapsulating how youthful obsession can fast-track a sporting career.
Parents often provide the human detail behind sporting headlines, and in Lawrie’s case the family story is part of the charm. His mother recalls him being lifted out of his pram so he could play on a dartboard, and that early exposure helped hatch what has quickly become a serious ambition. “He was probably around two or three,” she said, remembering how a grandparent’s love of the game nudged Mitchell toward his first dartboard and, eventually, to tournaments. Lawrie himself names Gary Anderson as his hero and says his goal is simple: to become a world champion.
Comparisons to Littler will follow — teenage heroics in darts make for easy headlines — but there’s good reason for cautious optimism. Lawrie will be just a year younger than Littler was when he made his first splash at Lakeside; notably, Mitchell already has entries into both youth and senior WDF events and has earned prize money and trophies on the amateur circuit that suggest his trajectory is more than a fluke. Observers point out that winning senior titles at 14, throwing consistent three-figure averages in finals, and now delivering a nine-darter are a rare confluence of form, temperament and opportunity.
Of course, the path from amateur perfection to pro stardom is strewn with pitfalls — pressure, expectation and the management of a young athlete’s development among them. Still, within the darting community there’s a buzz that Lawrie could be the real deal: talented, practiced, and fearless on the oche. Whether he becomes the next Littler or forges a different route to the top, one thing is certain — when Mitchell Lawrie steps up to throw, people now watch with a little more intensity.
For now, Lawrie will return to school, to family life in Renfrew, and to the regular practice that got him here. The nine-darter is a moment — an exclamation mark on a young career — but it’s the daily grind and the follow-up performances that will decide how high he climbs. If this week’s perfection is any indication, the darts world should be ready: a new name has arrived, and he’s only just getting started.
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