Fallon Sherrock almost stunned three-time PDC World Champion Michael van Gerwen to win the inaugural Nordic Darts Masters in Copenhagen on Saturday evening – but he was still made to regret a 2017 tweet.
After beating Johnny Clayton’s threat, Sherrock, 32, was the favorite to win the final.
Sherrock, however, won Dimitri Van den Bergh’s semi-final victory after coming back from 8-2 down. Sherrock had been given a walkover by Gerwyn Price in round 1.
After Sherrock had led seven legs to five, the game was almost over.
(Image: Twitter @MvG180)
When asked back in 2017 whether there will ever be a woman player who could compete with the top men players, Van Gerwen simply replied: “No.”
The former world number one seemed to have changed his tune last year, with Sherrock becoming the first woman to beat a man at the PDC World Championships in 2019.
“Fallon, I think, is good for darts,’ Van Gerwen told Live Darts.
“Although she has much to learn, she is sure to be a great player if she continues to listen to me.
(Image: ITV4)
With Sherrock saying of her rise: “The next step to it all would be – oh, it’s not just a woman beating a man.
“It’s two great players playing against each other and the winner, yes it might happen to be a woman but it’s not seen as ‘a woman’, it’s seen as a really good player.
It would be nice to reach that level, where it’s no surprise anymore.
(Image: Getty Images)
“There are many other women. You’ve got Lorraine [Winstanley], Ana (Anastasia Dobromyslova), Beau Greaves, all of them people. Even Mikuru [Suzuki].
“We can all beat the men. The more we do this, the more it becomes second nature.
“And hopefully we get to a point where it’s not massive news anymore, it’s just ‘yeah, they’ve beaten a man’. That’s the normality.”