‘Fat Beauty’ Kevin Leung thought darts was ‘stupid’ until he hit triple bullseye on his first go – now he wants to take the game out of pubs and bars
- The 36-year-old former equity broker is the second Hong Kong player to qualify for the elite ProTour
- He got his nickname ‘Fat Beauty’ in secondary school when ‘I was a bit overweight’ and is known as ‘FB’ in the darts community
Seven years ago, Kevin Leung Kai-fan was a stockbroker with a passion for long-distance running. If you had asked him then about darts as a sport, he would have dismissed you out of hand. “I thought it was a stupid game,” said Leung. “It was something you play in pubs when you are drunk.”
Indeed, Leung’s first dalliance with the game was in a pub, with friends and, no doubt, with pints of beer close at hand.
Leung was not to know that those first few throws of soft darts – in which the arrows have plastic tips instead of metal – would change his life. He hit the bullseye three times and almost immediately, darts was no longer a “stupid” game.
He started to take it seriously, entered competitions and become one of Hong Kong’s top players. At the end of 2015, he quit his job to take up darts full-time. In January, the 36-year-old Leung fulfilled one of his dreams when he became the second Hong Kong player to qualify for the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) ProTour – the world’s premier darts circuit.
His next goal? To take darts – or at least the perception of darts – out of the alcohol-soaked pubs and bars of Hong Kong.