Curtains drawn upstairs at the Balby Bridge social club, Beau Greaves revealed she almost quit darts eight months ago.
But when she tops the bill at Alexandra Palace next Friday night, the 18-year-old sensation will make her debut at the Cazoo PDC World Championship fortified by one of sport's longest winning streaks. Beau 'n' Arrow has gone from being struck down by 'dartitis' – the equivalent of a golfer's yips with the putter – to an incredible 64 consecutive wins in competitive games, and the meter is still ticking.
The new standard-bearer for girl power on the oche has reached the semi-finals at the Winmau World Masters in Holland without dropping a single leg in seven matches. Of the 477 men, women and juniors who entered the competition, she has posted the highest tournament average.
Now Greaves, the best thing to come out of Doncaster since pop relic Tony Christie, can't wait for her first-round date with Ireland's William O'Connor. Is this the way to Amarillo? No, but it could be a short cut to Armageddon for the UK Open semi-finalist if Greaves brings another winning hand to Ally Pally.
To put her remarkable form in 2022 in context: In women's sport, only tennis queen Martina Navratilova's 74-match winning run on all surfaces, back in 1984-85, tops Greaves' invincible sequence. And yet she was on the verge of jacking it in eight months ago.
Explaining that her problem was more stage fright than not letting go of the tungsten missiles, Greaves said: “You hope that one day you will wake up and it will be gone. But at the first PDC Women’s Series (nine months ago), I was playing a game on the streaming board and I didn’t want to be there.
“I had set myself up to fail before I had given myself a chance. I felt like I never had a problem letting the darts go - it was just where they were going to land. Before I even approached the oche, I was dreading it when I got up there. Eventually it got easier the more I played, but the problem was pushing yourself to play. You are like stuck in a boat.
“I was completely down in the dumps and I stopped playing before I won the worlds (the WDF women's world championship). I had convinced myself I had a massive problem. Then I had to convince myself I never did in the first place. It was like working your mind out.”
Greaves learned to play darts by taking on older brother Taylor in his bedroom. Now she celebrates each tournament win with sister Bobbi, 22, and a KFC chicken feast.
“When I won in Wigan (to clinch her Ally Pally place), I hadn’t eaten all day and I said to Bob, 'I'm starving, I have to eat' - so we went a bit mad. It was like £40 worth of KFC. Oh, my God!”
She was a 15-year-old, playing Fortnite on her PlayStation with darts on a stream in the background, when Fallon Sherrock rocked darts by becoming the first woman to win world championship games at Ally Pally, knocking out Ted Evetts and Mensur Suljovic, in 2019. Three years later, by winning eight PDC Women's Series floor events in a row, she overhauled Sherrock in the rankings to claim one of the two qualifying spots reserved for females, Lisa Ashton taking the other.
Controversially, the PDC appeared to move the goalposts to accommodate Sherrock at their showpiece event by retrospectively announcing her Women's World Matchplay success at Blackpool was her passport to the Palace. But Greaves has no issue with it, saying: “I had played Fallon before. All of the ladies knew how she good she was. It was no surprise how she won those games three years ago.
“It has been an absolute whirlwind for her and fair play to her - you would take every single opportunity that gets thrown at you. Anyone that says otherwise is full of crap. In a way, I didn’t think I was going to fit the sort of stereotype that the PDC want - Fallon is a girly girl, you could say I am more of a tomboy.
“I have never been bothered (by image), I have done the same thing. People say what they want. I am the same person really. But it's really about where the darts land on the board, and Fallon is a good darts player.”
