Noa-Lynn van Leuven 'deserves even more respect' for handling alleged clapping when she loses says Brian Raman

Noa-Lynn van Leuven was successful at the Women's Series last Sunday. She managed to win the 15th tournament by beating Beau Greaves in the finals. In the 16th tournament she reached the finals again, but this time she lost to the 20-year-old.

There has been an extraordinary amount of discussion surrounding Noa-Lynn van Leuven for months. She is allowed to participate in women's tournaments being transgender, but several players (including Deta Hedman, Aileen de Graaf and Anca Zijlstra) do not agree. Hedman already refused to play against Van Leuven several times and De Graaf and Zijlstra still refuse to play together with Van Leuven for the Dutch team.

"I recently saw an interview with Noa-Lynn on the youtube channel of the Modus Super Series. Since then, I do look at Noa-Lynn's situation quite differently," said former Tour Card holder Brian Raman.

"Her situation is very different from the stories you sometimes hear and they make of it. A lot of those comments she gets on social media are absolutely not okay. It must not be easy to deal with all of that."

Among other things, Van Leuven said in that interview that at the Women's Series, the whole room is often clapping when she loses. "I found that particularly heartbreaking to hear," Raman said. "It must be particularly painful for her, which is why she deserves even more respect for how she handles all of that."

If at least 128 players participate, the PDC Women's Series participants will be awarded prizes from the last 64, with fifty pounds for reaching this round. If there are fewer than 128 players, the counter only starts running from the last 32. In that case they do collect one hundred pounds.

This amount eventually keeps increasing. A final place already earns 1,000 pounds anyway. The winner of the tournament receives 2,000 pounds in prize money. The number one of the final ranking gets to compete at the Grand Slam of Darts and the PDC World Darts Championship, while the number two also gets to compete at Alexandra Palace.