A Week In Darts – December 11, 2023 – Lakeside Glory For Greaves And Baetens

Four world champions were crowned at the Lakeside as this year’s WDF World Championships reached its conclusion on Sunday evening. Meanwhile, some of the PDC’s top stars went undercover in the ‘Ally Pally Open’. Here’s our look back at the last week in darts…

BAETENS IS FIRST BELGIAN CHAMPION

Andy Baetens made history as the first Belgian to win a senior world title after clinching the WDF Men’s World Championship on Sunday night.

The top seed lived up to his billing as the pre-tournament favorite by seeing off Chris Landman 6-1 in the final at the Lakeside.

‘The Beast From The East’, who was appearing in his first World Championship final, averaged more than 100 in the first two sets and won them both without dropping a leg.

His Dutch opponent Landman had knocked out former world champions Neil Duff and Jelle Klaasen earlier in the week to also reach his maiden final at the Lakeside.

Landman won the third set to get on the board, but Baetens raced away from that point with checkouts of 170 and 146 helping him take the next three sets to finish as a comfortable winner.

Baetens pocketed the £50,000 top prize for winning the title and will be amongst the favorites to win a PDC tour card at Q-School next month.

GREAVES RETAINS WORLD CROWN

Beau Greaves reaffirmed her place at the top of the ladies’ game by retaining the WDF Women’s World Championship at the Lakeside on Sunday.

The WDF women’s number one saw off the challenge of first-time finalist Aileen de Graaf 4-1 to successfully defend her world crown.

The 19-year-old had become the youngest winner of the tournament when she lifted the title in April 2022, then at the age of 18, and has since gone on to rack up more than 50 tournament victories since then.

The teenager had dropped just two legs on her way to making back-to-back Women’s World Championship finals last week, and lost just one more leg as she stormed into a 2-0 lead against de Graaf.

Greaves battled back from 2-1 down in the third set to win 3-2 and move 3-0 up, before de Graaf kept her hopes alive by taking the fourth set 3-1.

But the number one seed got over the line in the next set, winning the set in 48 darts to complete a 4-1 victory.

Greaves becomes only the fifth multi-time women’s world champion, following in the footsteps of Trina Gulliver, Anastasia Dobromyslova, Lisa Ashton and Mikuru Suzuki.

AROUND THE BOARD

The two youth finals in the WDF World Championships also took place on Sunday night with new winners of both the boys and girls events.

Aurora Fochesato made history as she became the first Italian to win on the Lakeside stage, beating Hungary’s Krisztina Turai 2-0 to lift the girls title.

Dutch teen Bradley van der Velden whitewashed Ireland’s Adam Dee 3-0 to win the boys championship.

Meanwhile, four of the PDC’s top players went undercover for the PDC’s annual Christmas advert.

Nathan Aspinall, Jonny Clayton, Joe Cullen and Chris Dobey underwent prosthetic facial makeovers to take part in ‘The Ally Pally Open’ – a darts tournament which saw fans playing to win tickets to Alexandra Palace for the PDC World Championship, which starts on Friday.

Watch the video below to see how the PDC professionals got on in the tournament!

To celebrate the true start of Christmas - the @paddypower World Darts Championship - we hosted a darts tournament for the fans to win the ultimate darts experience.

... but we sent in a few famous faces undercover 👀 pic.twitter.com/cSMrYGWYaw

— PDC Darts (@OfficialPDC) December 8, 2023

Pictures: Chris Sargeant/Tip Top Pics

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Alex Moss is a content creator for Darts Corner and the co-host of the Weekly Dartscast podcast. Alex co-founded the Weekly Dartscast in 2017 and has helped produce 350+ episodes of the podcast, with their list of previous guests on the show a who’s who in the world of darts.

Alex also writes content for the Darts Corner blog, including the weekly darts news round-ups and how-to guides.