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.

Beau Greaves was beaten by William O‘Connor
Beau Greaves was beaten by Willie O‘Connor (Zac Goodwin/PA)

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.

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.

O’Connor suggested the focus on the match had not been to his taste, but predicted Greaves would continue to make waves.

“She threw absolutely brilliant stuff, she has a huge future ahead of her, and hopefully it’s the last time I play her for a long time,” he said.

“I don’t need this attention, I’d rather sneak away in the corner and mind my own business. I wasn’t going to fall into the circus of what it was, I just dealt with the task at hand.”

The final match of the night saw Michael Smith live up to his ‘Bully Boy’ nickname as the reigning Grand Slam champion put in a storming show against 22-year-old Nathan Rafferty. The fourth seed sprinted to victory, barely letting Rafferty find his feet as he won all nine legs without reply.

Smith brought an end to the hasty match with a bullseye finish, moving into the third round with a statement of intent. Earlier Keegan Brown lost his tour card as well as his first round meeting with Florian Hempel, going down 3-2 to head back to qualifying school.

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.