'It was an incredible run' – Jeff Smith looks back on Lakeside final, PDC breakthroughs, and beating Luke Humphries in New York

Jeff Smith has long been recognised as one of North America’s top darts players. The 49-year-old Canadian has competed at both the BDO and PDC World Championships and has proudly represented his country multiple times at the World Cup of Darts. His resume also includes a spell as a PDC Tour Card holder.

Smith’s World Championship debut came in 2015. After battling through qualification, he earned a spot at the BDO World Championship—and made an instant impact by reaching the semi-finals, where he was eventually beaten by the future champion, Scott Mitchell.

“It was crazy. You walk through the doors, you see all the pictures of the players. It’s very nostalgic. To be a part of that was unreal,” Smith recalls about playing at Lakeside for the first time in conversation with the MODUS Super Series YouTube channel.

Smith was accompanied that week by Darren Webster, who was still an active PDC Tour Card holder at the time—something that raised eyebrows with BDO organisers. “Darren was obviously a PDC player at that time and it was a little bit icy between BDO and PDC. They were like, ‘Are you sure you want this guy as your guest?’ And I was like, ‘Listen, I’ve roomed with him, I’ve got to know him over the years, and he’s a really good friend of mine and that’s who I’m bringing.’”

Webster ended up playing a key behind-the-scenes role in Smith’s deep run. “He was giving me little tidbits of each player… there’s a lot of different things that he helped me out with that day in that run, and I’m forever grateful.”

A year later, Smith returned to Lakeside and went one step further—reaching the final. “It was an incredible run. That match with Richard Veenstra took the sails out of me. I think I came off playing late at night, so hyper I don’t think I slept a wink all night… and that definitely killed me for the next day.”

The final proved a bridge too far. Smith was defeated 7–1 by Scott Waites, but the performance turned heads back home in Canada. “I don’t know what it is, but I actually won the crowd over at Lakeside. I was playing an Englishman and I had more of the crowd support than him—which is incredible considering I’m playing in England. Hopefully it’s my personality. People enjoy watching me play darts, and I had fun.”

But Smith’s journey into the upper echelons of darts had actually started a few years earlier—after a conversation with Simon Whitlock changed everything. He had already built a dominant record in Canada and the US before finally deciding to give Q School a shot.

“Simon told me… after I played Peter [Wright], I lost 6–5, had a match dart. He said, ‘You don’t understand, that guy’s playing top-10-in-the-world darts right now and you had him beat. You’ve got to get your rear end over to Q School and give it a go.’”

That move paid off—and led to one of the proudest moments of his career. “My real reason that I went to Q School was that I’d get to play with John Part in the World Cup… I won my first game—I think I played Nigel Hayden—and that put me into the PDC World Cup. I got to play with my hero, John Part.”