Luke Humphries was infuriated by his own stray darts in the final leg of Thursday night's win over Joe Cullen.

The world No. 1 posted the far superior average but had a hard time finishing the job in the first round of the World Masters. Humphries was on course for a resounding 3-0 victory when he left himself with only tops to hit in the third set.

But his first attempt went high, his second went low, and then he went wide after switching to double-10. Cullen then stepped up and took out 80 to stay in the match.

In the fourth set, Humphries hit a brilliant 138 set-up shot to leave tops for the match again. But 'Cool Hand' was struck by another bout of wastefulness as he missed double-20, double-10 and double-five in quick succession.

A furious Humphries winced, shook his head and muttered angrily to himself as he stormed past Cullen on the oche. It was only due to 'The Rockstar', who won the tournament in 2022, making a mess of his own checkout that Humphries was given another chance at redemption.

And after six missed darts for the match, he finally took out double-five to haul the result over the line. The 3-1 win set up an intriguing match between Humphries and Josh Rock in the last 16.

The four-day event in Milton Keynes sees the world's top-24 players compete for a £100,000 top prize against eight lower-ranked challengers who came through the preliminary rounds earlier in the week.

Stephen Bunting is the reigning champion and he kicked off his title defence with a hard-fought win over William Borland, which went to a deciding leg. Elsewhere on the opening night, Rock saw off Jermaine Wattimena, Damon Heta defeated Ross Smith and Gerwyn Price thrashed Florian Hempel.

There was a surprise defeat for Rob Cross, fresh from his overall win at the Dutch Darts Masters last weekend, as he lost 3-1 to William O'Connor despite averaging more than 103.

Peter Wright continued his promising upturn in form with a 3-2 win over Kevin Doets. The Scotsman prevailed in a final-leg decider, and another ton-plus average provided fresh encouragement that he could enjoy a deep run in the tournament.

Friday's action will see the likes of Gary Anderson, Michael van Gerwen, Luke Littler, Chris Dobey, Nathan Aspinall and James Wade take to the stage before the later rounds unfold over the weekend.