Beau Greaves became the first woman to win a PDC ranking title by defeating Michael Smith 8-7 in the Players Championship 11 final in Milton Keynes.<\/p>\n
The 22-year-old checked out with 142 in the deciding leg to seal victory against the former world champion, closing with a double 11.<\/p>\n
She also took out 170 in leg nine, on her way to a 80% checkout success and an average of 96.49. <\/p>\n
Greaves enjoyed a strong run to the final, defeating two more ex-world champions in Rob Cross 6-5 in the quarter-finals and Gary Anderson 7-1 in the semi-finals.<\/p>\n
It is the latest step in Greaves’ ascendant career, after she recorded a 114-match winning run<\/a> in the PDC Women’s Series and became the first woman to hit a nine-dart finish<\/a> on the PDC ProTour.<\/p>\n “I’ve had a great year, but I never thought I’d win one of these, never ever,” said Greaves.<\/p>\n “Today I played really well. I’m so happy, I can’t even describe the way I feel. I feel so proud of myself.<\/p>\n “I beat Gary Anderson – I can’t believe it. Even beating Michael – I’m beating players I watched growing up. Hopefully I can kick on and keep doing it.”<\/p>\n Elsewhere in the tournament, world number two Luke Humphries exited in the third round 6-5 to Max Hopp, while Premier League Darts players Stephen Bunting and Josh Rock fell in the first round.<\/p>\n The event did not feature world champion Luke Littler, who is yet to play in a Players Championship event this year, while Michael van Gerwen, Jonny Clayton, Gerwyn Price and Nathan Aspinall were also not in the field.<\/p>\n There are 34 Players Championship events across the year, with the competition’s finals held in Minehead, Somerset from 26-30 November, featuring the 64 best-performing players.<\/p>\n Greaves currently sits fifth in the Players Championship order of merit after her win on Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Beau Greaves became the first woman to win a PDC ranking title by defeating Michael Smith 8-7 in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":420498,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-420497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}