Rashad Sweeting is the Bahamas history maker aiming for a shot at Gary Anderson.
The Candyman is the first player from his country to play at the World Championship. Sweeting, an immigration officer, stamped his Ally Pally passport through the Championship Darts Latin America and Caribbean Order of Merit. Victory over Jeffrey De Graaf on Tuesday night would give the 34-year-old a dream shot at Anderson in Sunday’s second round.
Sweeting reckons no-one is going to recognise him at the Ally Pally and said: “I hope the bodyguards don’t push me away! I’m going to really shake some heads when I get on that stage. I don’t want to seem cocky, I’m just confident. I was at work when the draw came out. They called my name, then I saw the two-time world champion, Gary Anderson. “My saying is that, ‘If you breathe, you can be beaten’. I have no fear of no man.”
Sweeting wants to bust some stereotypes as he added: “I’m here to dismiss the ideas of what people think a Bahamian dart player is like. People think we are playing with a dartboard on a palm tree at the beach. Never happened. Some people have put dartboards outside, but the weather is going to damage it.
“My walk-on is I’m a Bahamian by Nakhaz, which describes what Bahamian people are like. People think we still live in Tahiti huts. We don’t.
“I started throwing darts in 2009. We haven’t been on the biggest stages. I wanted to be the first player to get us on that map and be recognised, not only in the Caribbean but around the world. I’m a natural athlete, I play a lot of sports. I used to help (cousin) Lawrence with his kids to play volleyball and basketball, they are the No 1 sports. He wanted to introduce me to darts, he had the set-up but I was like: No, it’s a boring sport. But one day he beat me and that’s what got me into it.
“Phil Taylor was my motivation. I used to watch the mechanics of his game with slow motion on YouTube. I tried to dissect how he did it.
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