History-maker Beau Greaves impresses despite debut defeat at World Darts Championship

The 18-year-old women’s darts superstar suffered a 3-0 defeat to Willie O’Connor in the first round at Alexandra Palace

(Getty Images)

Beau Greaves fell to a 3-0 defeat on her history-making debut in the World Darts Championship, with Willie O’Connor proving too strong in their first-round clash at Alexandra Palace.

The 18-year-old is the youngest woman to compete in the tournament, and has been in dominant form in the PDC Women’s Series, but she was unable to land a blow on her Irish opponent.

The crowd were loud in their support of the Doncaster thrower, but O’Connor held his nerve to finish the match with six legs in a row and celebrated the moment magnanimously as he raised Greaves’ hand.

Her maiden appearance had started in eye-catching fashion as she nailed a 120 checkout in the opening leg, but she later missed double sixteen to take the set and allowed O’Connor to take the lead.

After nonchalantly checking her phone during the break, Greaves produced another impressive finish of 122 in the second set, and also banked a 180.

But the same pattern unfolded as she faltered at the decisive moment to go 2-0 behind, spurning a chance to go for bullseye and leaving the door open.

Greaves was the crowd favourite at Ally Pally (PA)

O’Connor was ruthless as Greaves’ radar wandered in the final set, but with so much time in front of her the teenager is likely to have plenty of better days ahead.

Rowby-John Rodriguez had earlier lost 3-2 to Lourence Ilagan in a back-and-forth encounter that went all the way.

The afternoon session saw a quartet of straight sets victories, with Alan Soutar seeing off Mal Cuming, Boris Krcmar beating Toru Suzuki, Adrian Lewis easing past Daniel Larsson and Kim Huybrechts besting Grant Sampson.