Beau Greaves: ‘I started beating better players and the penny dropped: I can be good enough to do this full-time’

Back at the PDC world championship for the first time since 2022, the women’s world champion means business, starting on Friday against the world No 22

“When I was younger, they thought I was a mute,” Beau Greaves says with a wry smile, thinking about all the ways darts has changed her. “Never said owt in school, really shy. Didn’t really know what to say half the time. I suppose playing darts just brought me out of my shell. When you get popular, people want to meet you and talk. It’s matured me.”

Greaves was 18 the first time she won the Lakeside women’s world championship, thrusting herself firmly into the crosshairs of public adulation. And even if she played like a natural-born star, with her beautiful fluid throwing arc, she didn’t always feel like one. Endless interviews, viral fame, global domination: this was never what she had craved from the sport. She was Beau, and she just wanted to throw.