Winter is swirling into Doncaster, blowing up the train tracks and down past Balby Bridge Social Club, five minutes from where teenage darts sensation Beau Greaves grew up with her five brothers and sisters. Inside it is warm, a Christmas tree in the corner, England flags strung across the ceiling, while Greaves uncomplainingly goes through a complex photoshoot upstairs. She’s 6ft tall in her sparkling white trainers, and towers over the photographer.
The 18-year-old Greaves has had a magical year. She has won an astonishing 66 consecutive matches, and eight tournaments in a row in the PDC Women’s Series to qualify for the PDC World Championship which starts on Thursday at Alexandra Palace. On Friday at 8pm, she faces William O’Connor in the first round, at 18 the youngest woman to play in the tournament, which contains 96 players but just three women.
O’Connor, ranked 37 in the world, will be the favourite, but only just, against the female player who goes by the moniker Beau ’n’ Arrow.
“She’s already a star,” the darts commentator Rod Studd says. “In a way her sex is irrelevant. If she was Brian Greaves she’d still be incredible, it’s the standard she’s performing at. She’s won 66 consecutive darts matches, it’s absolutely extraordinary, the sort of numbers you’d associate with Phil Taylor at his best.
“Numbers are a big thing in darts. If you’re averaging 50 plus in Test cricket you’re a good player, in darts the barometer is a three‑dart average of over 100. When she beat Fallon Sherrock to clinch her place at Alexandra Palace, she averaged almost 108.”
The win against Sherrock, who hit the headlines when she became the first women to win a match at the PDC World Championship in December 2019, was the culmination of an astonishing run. Greaves missed the first 12 of the 20 qualifying tournaments, playing on the rival WDF circuit, but then calmly pocketed the remaining eight. “It is ridiculous,” she admits.
Greaves started playing when she was 10, on the dartboard in her older brother Taylor’s bedroom while he was messing about on the Xbox. She had a naturally good action, her throw was straight, and by the time she was 11 she was joining Taylor and her dad at the Plough pub for Monday league darts.
By 12 she was representing England at youth darts, travelling all over Europe. “I felt dead lucky to do it at such a young age,” she says, and was drafted into the senior competition in 2021.
It has not been all plain sailing, she suffered from dartitis for a year, a debilitating condition a bit like the yips.
“It’s a mental thing,” she says. “For me it was the problem of approaching the board, I couldn’t get my sen [self] on the oche. I was playing and I didn’t want to be there. I would try and throw and think it is going to miss the board or it’s going to land nowhere near where I aimed it. It’s a fear of missing, it’s really weird.”
She was helped by a friend of her mum’s, Becky, and the pair spoke every week. “She was brilliant for me. It helped getting used to talking about it. Some people can’t talk about it because they think they’re going to get it again. I’ll talk about it all day if I think it will help someone. Not talking about it just keeps it inside. I’m not perfect now, it’s in your head, but half the time I don’t think about it any more.”
Greaves kept her hand in during lockdown playing online darts, left school and had a good spell on the ladies tour before going to Doncaster College, who even sponsored her for a year. She pocketed her maths and English GCSEs and did a year’s painting and decorating course before throwing her lot in with darts.
“I wanted to go back for a second year but it didn’t work with the travelling. I can always go back if anything goes wrong for me but, at the minute, I think I’ll leave the paintbrush for another day.”
She bought a car with the £25,000 she won at the WDF World Championship in April, “a Mini Cooper Clubman, a good little runner” and there is also a new puppy, “a nightmare, she wants to play all the time”.
But most of all she’s enjoying herself, travelling and playing, accompanied by her older sister Bobbi, who is also responsible for her hand tattoos.
“In lockdown, we got a stick and poke set. She did all mine and they’re terrible and I did hers and I did them really well. I said, ‘Bob, you’ve butchered my hands.’ I try and hide them when I can.”
But Bobbi was forgiven and the two are close. “I go away with my sister a lot and me and her just do our own thing and sometimes it gets to a point where I forget I’m playing darts. This has been my best year so far, I’ve been to loads of places and I feel grateful and lucky to have this life at 18. I love it and the second I stop enjoying it I’ll stop playing. It’s just a sport isn’t it?”
Is she able to ignore the pressure now swirling around her? “I have done this year. It is hard when people talk, and naturally there is always a build up around stuff, but it’s different when you are in the game. Nobody’s going to chop your arms off if you get beat.”
She may be softly spoken, but Greaves comes across as an incredibly wise head on young shoulders. “Darts brings you on so much. It sort of taught me everything I’ve really needed to know, how to deal with stuff, how to act with people, just being confident in your self. I’m grateful for that. By the time I was 14, 15, I was so mature for my age, it was [also] the way I’ve been brought up, I’ve got a great family.”
Her mum and dad, and Taylor and Bobbi, will be in the crowd at Ally Pally cheering her on.
“You are on the back foot,” she says, “you’re really not expected to win. It’s a weird feeling because obviously you’re playing a bloke. I’m not the first lady to play on there but I’m just going to try and enjoy it.” It feels the next inevitable step in her inexorable rise.
The Cazoo World Darts Championship is live exclusively on Sky Sports from 15 December to 3 January.
