How it unfolded
The 25-year-old Fallon Sherrock earned her World Championship place through the PDC Women's Series and stepped onto the Alexandra Palace stage. Her first-round opponent, Ted Evetts, was a male tour-card professional, and no woman had ever beaten a man at this tournament before. Sherrock won 3-2. Her average topped 90 and her checkout rate outdid her opponent's, and the reaction from the sold-out crowd at the final moment was unlike any first-round match this tournament had produced. Four days later she beat Austria's Mensur Suljovic, then ranked eleventh in the world, 3-1 in the second round, becoming both the first woman to win at this tournament and the first to win twice. She was eliminated in the third round, but by then her name was already appearing in outlets that had never covered darts.
Why it still matters
The long-standing claim that physical advantage plays almost no part in darts was proven out over these few days. Afterward the PDC restructured the prize-money Women's Series into a ranking circuit and guaranteed women's places at the World Championship and major TV events, and the next generation, including Beau Greaves, grew up on that structure. This match was the moment women's darts finally acquired a system and an economy of its own.