Corrine Hammond opens up on her World Championship aspirations, and the way forward for girls’s darts

Corrine Hammond completed fourth on the Ladies’s Sequence Order of Advantage final yr (Chris Sargeant/TipTopPics)

The prospect of competing on the PDC World Championship is the head for any darts participant. The brilliant lights, the historic Alexandra Palace stage, and the status of competing within the sport’s flagship occasion – the place goals are made and shattered in equal measure.

Former BDO World Championship finalist Corrine Hammond will likely be among the many hopefuls bidding to pattern that event with success on the PDC Ladies’s Sequence, which will get underneath approach in Milton Keynes this weekend.

Hammond has thrived on the well-known Lakeside stage; she’s claimed the scalps of a number of the biggest feminine gamers of all time, and he or she’s represented Australia with aplomb.

Regardless of this, the considered gracing darts’ greatest stage this Christmas is as terrifying as it’s tantalising for the 39-year-old, who balances her darting commitments together with her work at an insurance coverage firm.

“I believe yeah I would love to have that chance, then at different instances I believe I couldn’t consider something worse than having to stand up on that stage at Ally Pally and play within the World Championships,” she joked, in dialog with the Darts Present podcast.

“I am not going to lie if I stated there might be some critical upset abdomen, eager to throw up, that type of factor!

“Whereas I might actually love the chance, there is part of me that claims: ‘Yeah, I could not consider something worse’.”

Hammond’s refreshing candour definitely struck a chord with former world No 1 Lorraine Winstanley and Sky Sports activities commentator Laura Turner, who’re additionally set to headline this weekend’s motion on the Marshall Enviornment.

Two-time main finalist Hammond will likely be highly-fancied to contend for World Championship and Grand Slam qualification

Nevertheless, make no mistake – the celebs of the ladies’s sport are determined to not solely obtain particular person success, however to showcase the game in its very best gentle and shield its long-term future.

The ladies’s sport has been shrouded in uncertainty all through the final 18 months, with the coronavirus pandemic coinciding with the demise of the British Darts Organisation, and in consequence, many have been starved of aggressive motion.

Whereas there are potential avenues with the World Darts Federation, the England Darts Organisation and MAD Darts, the expanded Ladies’s Sequence – which is able to see £60,000 of prize cash on provide throughout 12 occasions – represents a life-changing alternative.

Final yr’s inaugural PDC Ladies’s Sequence featured greater than 80 members, though the opening leg of this yr’s sequence in Germany – as a consequence of happen in August – was rescheduled as a consequence of a paltry complete of twenty-two entries.

Hammond has been among the many high-profile gamers canvassing on social media, urging her colleagues to understand the chance and capitalise on the momentum that is been constructed throughout the ladies’s sport over current years.

“I am simply preserving my fingers crossed that sufficient girls have been getting into to have the ability to make it a profitable sequence, as a result of the very last thing we need to do is lose that chance from right here on in.

“There have been fairly a couple of of us who have been campaigning in Selsey; speaking to everybody we knew, asking them: ‘Had they entered, have been they getting into, have been they planning on getting into? Let’s get behind this, let’s assist it’.”

The expertise pool inside girls’s darts has by no means been stronger. Lisa Ashton turned the primary feminine to win a Tour Card at Q-College in January 2020, whereas Fallon Sherrock continues to flourish – reaching the ultimate on the Nordic Masters in Copenhagen final weekend.

Fallon Sherrock defeated world No 5 Dimitri Van den Bergh en path to reaching the Nordic Darts Masters remaining final weekend

Deta Hedman’s résumé is the envy of the darting world; a number of world champions Anastasia Dobromyslova and Mikuru Suzuki are nonetheless competing among the many elite, whereas 10-time girls’s world champion Trina Gulliver is about to make her return.

If you add main winner Aileen de Graaf into the combination alongside Hammond, Winstanley, Turner and Maria O’Brien, plus the prodigiously gifted teenage duo of Beau Greaves and Katie Sheldon, the long run seems vivid, however there’s nonetheless extra to be performed.

“You may have most likely received a dozen to twenty gamers who’re fairly critical about it, that need to have the ability to have the alternatives to play at that increased stage,” Hammond added.

“You’ve got that subsequent type of combine that go: ‘I take pleasure in darts, I like enjoying. I am fairly aggressive at it, however I am not likely taking a look at doing it professionally.

“There’s fairly a giant combine and it is about having the ability to get that center vary of gamers to start out collaborating in it, going: ‘You actually do have some good alternatives right here, you can make one thing of it’.

“It’s about having the ability to transfer them from being that center vary as much as the dozen to twenty of us which are fairly critical about it.

“If we will develop on that quantity and have extra consistency with the quantity of ladies that enter these competitions, I believe the long run could be very vivid.”

Hammond completed fourth on the Ladies’s Sequence Order of Advantage 12 months in the past, the place she was solely bettered by the formidable trio of Ashton, Hedman and Sherrock.

Whereas World Championship qualification stays the last word prize, there are additionally two locations on provide at November’s Grand Slam of Darts, however the former World Masters runner-up insists consistency will maintain the important thing.

4-time girls’s world champion Lisa Ashton is bidding to seal her third Alexandra Palace look in 4 years

“I am not going to place any stress on myself. Clearly the expectation is simply to play nicely – no matter occurs will occur, I can solely throw the darts which are in entrance of me.

“We now have all received that good sport in us and that is the differentiator inside girls’s darts as nicely. We are able to all throw these nice 12, 13, 15-dart legs, however it’s about having the ability to do it persistently.

“I believe that perhaps the expertise of these of us which have performed the circuit earlier than and performed in what was beforehand the BDO World Championship – would possibly see that have pull by way of.

“There will certainly be some upsets alongside the way in which. I would not be stunned about that in any respect.”

Darts is again in your Sky Sports activities screens, with all seven days of the distinctive double-to-start World Grand Prix from Leicester’s Morningside Enviornment stay from October 3 as Gerwyn Value defends the title he gained final yr