Deta Hedman has been winning darts tournaments since before some of her Winter Gardens opponents this summer were even born. You name a country, she’s probably won there.
When DartsWorld Legacy posted a remarkable cover image recently showing The Caribbean Queen winning a 1994 double it prompted thoughts of how significant her recent Blackpool debut had been.
So when the 66-year-old finally walked out for her Women’s World Matchplay debut in July, the story wasn’t really about a first appearance at all. It was about a career that has spanned five decades finally intersecting with a stage that didn’t exist for most of it.
A Darts Career Built Across Organisations and Generations
Hedman’s playing record reads less like a career and more like a history of the women’s game itself. She first picked up darts competitively in the 1980s, and by the time she made her BDO bow in 1989, women’s darts barely had a professional structure to speak of.
She’s played under the BDO banner (twice), competed on the WDF stage across five decades, and has held a PDC presence on and off since 2002.
Along the way she’s amassed what’s been reported as more than 250 tournament wins. A World Masters title in 1994, repeated in 2013 nearly two decades later, multiple Dutch Open and other prestigious open crowns and a PDC Women’s Desert Classic title in 2002. Few players in any sport can point to silverware separated by that kind of timespan and still be adding to the pile.
The Elusive Crown
For all that longevity, one prize had stayed just out of reach. The WDF Women’s World Championship. Hedman finally claimed it in December 2025, a breakthrough all the more notable given who wasn’t in the field. It was the first year since 2021 that Beau Greaves hadn’t won the title, though Greaves had chosen to prioritise the PDC World Darts Championship instead.
Hedman made the most of the opening and the win capped a career that had collected major honours for decades without quite landing this particular one.
A Winter Gardens Debut
The Women’s World Matchplay didn’t exist for most of Hedman’s career and reaching it required her to do something she hadn’t managed in six years: win a PDC Women’s Series event. She did exactly that in May, her maiden Lakeside triumph in December evidently sharpening rather than dulling her edge, and followed it with a second Series title in June to confirm her place in the Blackpool field alongside fellow debutant Vicky Pruim.
At 66, she arrived as the oldest player in the draw by some distance, drawn against 2022 champion Fallon Sherrock in a first-round meeting that had “Caribbean Queen” written all over the build-up. Two of the women’s game’s most recognisable names sharing a stage for the first time.
The Brutal Blackpool Draw
The match itself didn’t go her way. Sherrock was ruthless, running out a 5-0 winner built on a pair of 13-darters that never let Hedman find a foothold in the game. It was a whitewash, and on paper it ended her Blackpool debut in the quickest way possible.
But the scoreline was never really the point. Walking out at the Winter Gardens at all, decades after her first BDO appearance and only months after landing the WDF world title that had escaped her for so long, was the achievement.
Hedman herself has been characteristically level-headed about where she sits in the current landscape, point out that with Beau Greaves in the field, a lot of the chasing pack are playing for second place. But she’s also been clear that ticking off a first Matchplay appearance mattered on its own terms, regardless of the result.
A Constant Thread Through an Evolutionary Story
Hedman’s career now stretches across a women’s game that looks almost unrecognisable from the one she entered in the 1980s. From a patchwork of BDO events with little visibility, through the WDF’s various guises, to a PDC-backed Women’s Series with televised events and genuine prize money.
An OBE for services to darts and charity, a WDF world title at 65 and a Women’s World Matchplay debut at 66. It’s less a late-career footnote than confirmation that Deta Hedman’s story in this sport was never about slowing down.
Images: DartsWorld Magazine
