Beau Greaves is to women’s darts what Luke Littler is to darts in general.
She is a generational talent and is helping to grow the reputation and popularity of darts for all ages, genders and nationalities.
Fallon Sherrock has really put women’s darts on the map in recent years – not forgetting the contributions of Trina Gulliver, Deta Hedman, Anastasia Dobromoyslova or Lisa Ashton – and while she has been competitive within the men’s game, she hasn’t troubled the elite.
Beau Greaves is different.
She’s hitting averages that are easily comparable with top men’s players and while she burst onto the scene at a young age, it’s the last two years (since competing as an adult) that she is really showing what she can do.
For that reason, ourselves and many other fans of the game feel that Beau Greaves has the potential to be the greatest women’s darts player of all time.
This is a debatable topic so we’ve compiled a list with some key points for why she has the potential to reach this accolade.
4) It Was Predicted When She Was Just 12 Years Old!!!
Whatever your opinion is of the BBC, ignore it for a moment because we need to give them some credit here.
When Beau was just 12 years old she was interviewed by the BBC. It was only a short interview and just highlighting her talent at such a young age.
Remember, this was 2017 so before Luke Littler got millions of kids into the game and before Fallon Sherrok was given the title as “Queen of the Palace”, getting more women interested in the game.
It was therefore much less common to have a talented and young female darts player.
Trina Gulliver summed Beau up with the quote:
“This is your future World Champion”
That’s a big statement to make and prodigies often get labels like this but she was just 12. That was a huge statement to make but guess what, she’s done it.
It’s fair to say that this video aged well and for once and that’s not sarcasm!
She easily lived up to that prediction and from what we’re seeing, there’s no reason she can’t exceed all expectations going forward.
3) Has the Highest Recorded Women’s Average
During a Modus Super Series match against Kevin Painter a few months ago, Beau hit the highest recorded women’s average of 114.56.
It was only a 5 leg game (which Beau won 4-1) but even still… 114.56 isn’t just a high average you can accidentally get over that many legs, that’s solid throwing!
She had 6 x 180’s, a checkout percentage of 57.14% hitting 4/7 on the doubles and had a high checkout of 121 during the match.
On the very first leg, she was on for a nine-dart finish after hitting 7 straight T20’s but missed the T19 to leave a double.
Related – Most MEMORABLE nine-dart finishes of all time
2) Back to Back World Championships
Trina Gulliver has a ridiculous record of 10 World Championships in the BDO/WDF so this is the target to beat and it’s going to take some doing but Beau has 2 to her name already and she is only 20 years old!
She’s already joint 4th of all time for World titles.
Trina had a peak in the BDO of 20 years before the organisation issues, you can’t predict the future but we’re writing this at the time Beau just won the Women’s World Matchplay beating Fallon Sherrock in the final.
So, even the ‘best’ female player is struggling against Beau and Fallon doesn’t compete in the WDF so Beau is in a class of her own in that competition.
Trina is only really eclipsed by Phil Taylor and Michael van Gerwen when it comes to dominating their era but the way Beau is going, we can really see here beating Trina’s records and doing something more similar to Taylor.
She’s been to 9 WDF finals in the last 2 years, winning 8 of them and has won 23 Women’s Series titles in the PDC in the same time period.
1) She WANTS to Stay in the Women’s Game
This is the main one in our opinion.
The debate about gender in sport has been raging for a few years now and darts has its own. The question is usually can women compete with the men…
Well, Beau doesn’t try to get involved in this debate, she has recently said that she hates playing against the men and wants the PDC to keep the men’s and women’s game separate.
She wants to dominate the women’s game.
Sure, she competes in mixed gender competitions but she is locked in on her lane and wants it to be strictly the women’s game.
Having seen what she has been capable of the last few years while still only being 20 years of age, there’s no doubt she can be competitive in the men’s tournaments. To what level, we don’t know.
The fact that she is so much behind the women’s only segment though could be great for her legacy.
Much like Phil Taylor dominated the men’s game, we don’t see any reason why Beau can’t do the same in the women’s…
Beau Greaves calls for ladies and men's darts to stay separate | "HOW MANY LADIES ARE BETTER THAN MEN"
— Darts Now (@DartsNow_) July 21, 2024
Greaves lifted the Matchplay for the 2nd time but called for the PDC to provide more opportunities and keep men and women darts apart
🎥FULL INT👇🏼https://t.co/J32C9QRAhR pic.twitter.com/fJhOAyLvso
Summary
We only have a short career to base this on so far, but in the few years that Beau has been playing as a senior player, she’s been on a dominant spree that we’ve rarely seen before.
The fact that she wants the women’s game to be separate from the men’s and for the women’s game to grow in terms of tournaments and participation is a key indicator of where her focus is.
While she can be competitive with the men, if she keeps winning the way she is in the women’s only side of the game, then surely she will go on and be the greatest women’s darts player of all time…
What do you think about Beau’s early career so far, let us know in the comment below if you think she could go on and be the greatest ever women’s darts player.
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