For most of the last two years, Beau Greaves hasn’t so much dominated the Women’s Series as owned it outright. A run that peaked with 114 consecutive match wins on the circuit between April 2025 and March 2026. But Blackpool has occasionally had other ideas.
The two-time Women’s World Matchplay champion arrived at the Winter Gardens twelve months ago as the player to beat and left as a beaten semi-finalist, watching Lisa Ashton go on to lift the title. On Sunday 26 July, Greaves gets her chance to put that right, top seed once more, opening against Finland’s Kirsi Viinikainen in a rematch of last year’s first round.
Around her sits a field with storylines everywhere you look. With a Grand Slam spot and a place at the World Championship on the line for the winner, this is a five-match salvo with plenty riding on it.
Unfinished Business
What’s changed since Greaves’ back-to-back Matchplay wins in 2023 and 2024 isn’t her results in the women’s game, which have barely dipped. It’s what she’s doing outside it. In April, she became the first woman to win a PDC ranking title, beating Michael Smith in the Players Championship 11 final. Greaves did it as a Tour Card holder, only the second woman to ever earn one. She’s since gone on to qualify for two European Tour events, another first.
Bidding for a third Matchplay title, she now arrives against a very different backdrop than her first two. This time she’s not just the dominant force in the women’s game defending her turf. She gets to Blackpool with a target on her back that reflects that.
Fallon’s Fabulous Record
Fallon Sherrock has a stranger relationship with this tournament than anyone else in the field. She won the very first edition in 2022, then reached back-to-back finals in 2024 and 2025, and lost both. Three finals from five editions and only one title to show for it is a record that’s simultaneously the most consistent and the most frustrating.
Her round one draw against debutant Deta Hedman looks kind on paper, but darts has a habit of making things complicated, especially in front of a home Blackpool crowd desperate to see Sherrock go one better than last year.
The Title Defence
Lisa Ashton’s win last July was built on beating Greaves in the semi-final before completing the job against Sherrock in the final, arguably the best week of her career at 60 years old. She returns to Blackpool as champion for the first time, and her round-one match against Rhian O’Sullivan is the one genuine toss-up of the opening round, and however that goes, she is now the hunted rather than the hunter.
Hayter’s Timing
Of everyone in the field, nobody arrives at Blackpool with better timing than Gemma Hayter. At the time of writing, she is tearing through the WDF World Masters in Las Vegas, a perfect group stage without dropping a leg, a win over reigning world champion Deta Hedman and a run to the semi-finals.
That momentum lands her a tricky-looking quarter-final against Vicky Pruim, herself fresh off a breakthrough run of her own, in what could easily be the match of the round rather than a routine step for the fourth seed. Hayter has never gone deep at the Women’s World Matchplay before, but she’s never walked into it playing like this either.
A landmark debut
At 66, Deta Hedman making her Women’s World Matchplay debut is one of the standout stories of the entire week, in either the men’s or women’s draw. She only qualified by winning her second Women’s Series title last month, proof that her competitive edge shows no sign of dulling.
A first-round meeting with Sherrock is a brutal welcome to Blackpool, but whatever the result, simply walking out for the match is a story worth telling on its own terms.
2026 Betfred Women’s World Matchplay
Sunday July 26
Beau Greaves vs Kirsi Viinikainen
Gemma Hayter vs Vicky Pruim
Lisa Ashton vs Rhian O’Sullivan
Fallon Sherrock vs Deta Hedman
Images: PDC
