"I just don't think we will ever be good enough to play against the likes of Luke Humphries, Michael van Gerwen or Luke Littler. You're facing a losing battle before you've even thrown a dart."
It's not your typical victory speech but it's what a triumphant Beau Greaves declared after clinching a second straight Women's World Matchplay title last year. "I think for me, the women's game is more important," she continued. "I don't think any lady will ever go to Ally Pally and win that. You are literally being silly if you think that's possible."
And yet, 18 months later, here she is: a PDC Tour Card in her back pocket and preparing to face No. 22 seed Daryl Gurney in the most eagerly anticipated first-round match at this year's World Darts Championship. With three consecutive women's world titles and a still-unbroken 86-game winning streak, perhaps winning women's events just became too straightforward, the laurels too easily rested upon.
"I think I've kind of changed my whole perspective on it a little bit," a contemplative Greaves says now. "I still think it's incredibly hard to play against them on the big stage and be really competitive. But I don't know, I think when I realised that I wanted to have a Tour Card -- and at the time I didn't really want that, I just wanted to be a ladies' darts player -- I think as I proved myself wrong and started playing a bit better and beating better players I kind of thought, 'oh, maybe I can be good enough to do this full time.'"
Greaves' personal rags to riches story did actually start with a rag. Helping her dad with his window cleaning round was a family rite of passage. "I absolutely loved it," she says with a smile while sitting in her parent's conservatory. "It was just something I did from time to time, not much, but yeah, I'd still do it now if he wasn't retired."
An old head on young shoulders -- "I'm only 21, but I feel like I've been 30 for like 15 years, I feel really, really old sometimes" -- Greaves displays an effortless authenticity. The hours spent peppering the dartboard with the locals at The Plough in Balby, near Doncaster, taking in a puppy, Beau-Beau, from her brother's dog's litter -- it all comes across in the way she welcomes every new face with a disarming, "hi love."
You sense her 'people' -- she's not famous enough for them to be branded an entourage (yet) -- know what they might have on their hands with Greaves.
In a world where the lines between genders are increasingly blurred, sport is becoming rigidly segregated. Darts, though, with its regulation 7 ft. 9.25 in. oche and the PDC's all are welcome attitude towards tournament participation, appears uniquely poised to provide the stage for equal competition. Greaves has been deliberately shielded from the flashbulbs and microphones to date, but if she now lives up to her billing and beats the boys -- as she did against Littler in October -- there is no limit to the heights she will climb.
"I just want to do well, I want to play well, but I just want to do things on my terms, not kind of getting enthralled in all the, 'she'll do this, she'll do that' type stuff," says Greaves, screwing her face up a little. "I just want to work hard and put practice in and see where I can get."
Speak to anyone in darts about Greaves and they will all bring up the same thing: that throwing motion. Greaves' effortless draw and release is as smooth as Donald Draper playing the Lindt master chocolatier. "I think I just throw more like a bloke than I do a lady really," Greaves smirks. "So that's what everyone's always told me growing up and obviously it's quite simple. I just try and keep it as simple as possible."
Her ascent, though, has been anything but smooth. Greaves, now trying to develop a "ruthless" streak in time for the worlds, struggled for confidence as a child and only pushed her limits within the confines of a dartboard. "When I was younger they thought I was mute because I never really said anything," she recalls. "So yeah, I never stood out in school, I was really shy and then I suppose playing darts just really brought me out of my shell."
Then as she began to make a name for herself on the junior circuit, performance anxiety in the form of dartitis threatened to nip her development in the bud. "I don't really have a problem on my own throwing, but sometimes if I think about it too much in front of the big crowds and stuff and I think, then it gets to me," she admits. "But I've done really well over the past few years to kind of block it out my game. But I am well aware that it will probably never leave me fully."
Beau Greaves recalls when she first suffered with dartitis and explains how she copes with the condition.
From working with her dad who she jokes "didn't pay me that much," Greaves is now one of an unprecedented total of five women competing with 123 men for a share of £5 million at this year's world championship. But the gulf between men's and women's darts has already proved too big of a jump for Lisa Ashton and Noa-Lynn van Leuven who were outclassed by former world champions in their first-round matches.
A miscalculation from her dad during the draw meant Greaves initially thought she had been handed a horror tie against Gerwyn Price, but she will still have to be at her best to get past Gurney on Friday (Beau 'n' Arrow vs. the SuperChin).
The ruthless nature of elite darts is something Greaves is still getting used to. She has fallen foul of it before on her one previous visit to the Ally Pally stage three years ago: a 3-0 defeat to William O'Connor in which she admits to having been a "nervous" 18-year-old who played well, but not in the key moments that you need to succeed in set play.
"With playing most of my career against the ladies, in the nicest way possible, I can kind of get away with a lot more," she says. "I can't really get away with a lot of stuff against the men. I think maybe when I've been playing, I've missed key doubles and crucial stuff. It's just because I might have another three or six darts at it sometimes and I think I've got to really nail that part of my game of when I've got to finish or checkout: it's kind of got to go."
But when the case gets zipped up for the last time and there's no more sisal left to pierce, what is it that she really wants to have gained from darts?
Greaves pauses to ponder the question.
"When I first started playing I just wanted to be a ladies' world champion. So when I did that I kind of sort of moved on to play more of the Women's Series and the PDC stuff. But I've always said I'd love a house out of darts," she shares after giving it some thought.
"I'd love to get a house from my darts career and then obviously it'd be amazing to win a major or to do really well successfully in the men's game, but I know that's going to be incredibly difficult. But I suppose I just want to be a long-term professional. I want to enjoy my life."
Combining breaking glass ceilings with cleaning the windows of her own home that'll be "obviously still in Yorkshire" -- the double life of darts' new sensation.
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