Many snooker enthusiasts follow the sport with great interest, and they will probably be interested to learn some remarkable facts from the history of professional snooker.
Once upon a time, ‘snookers’, which translates as ‘long noses’, were jokingly called English cadets who had never seen gunpowder and who wore caps with large visors. In 1875, British Army officer Neville Chamberlain, passing the monotonous days of his service in India, invented a new version of billiards, which he thought was more challenging than the familiar classic version. Because of this, Neville’s first playing partner found himself in a difficult situation. ‘What a snooker!’ (meaning a yellow ball) exclaimed Mr Chamberlain. That is how the new game got its name.
Today, snooker has become one of the most popular billiard games on the planet.
- Ronnie O’Sullivan turned professional as the world snooker champion among players under 21. Ronnie won seventy of his first seventy-two matches as a professional.
- Alex Higgins was the first player to play 15 red balls through the black at the World Championship, although he never managed to achieve a 147-point series.
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- At the age of 16 years and 11 months, Jimmy White became the youngest amateur world champion (this happened in 1970).
- At the 1982 World Championship, defending champion Steve Davis was defeated 10–1 by Tony Knowles in the first round.
- Joe Davis made the first official maximum break in 1955.
- Steve Davis made the first televised 147 break in 1982 at the Lada Classic tournament.
- On doctors’ orders, Canadian snooker player Bill Werbenuk had to drink a pint (about half a litre) of lager (a type of light beer) after each game, which sometimes amounted to 40 pints of lager a day. This huge man, weighing about 128 kg, drank litres of beer before, during and after matches to calm the tremor in his cue hand. This tremor was the result of a hereditary nervous disorder.
- Ronnie O’Sullivan made a record 30 century breaks in his first season as a professional snooker player.
- Stephen Hendry won the Rothmans Grand Prix in 1987 at the age of 18, becoming the youngest player to win a ranking tournament.
- Cliff Thorburn made the first 147 break in the history of the World Snooker Championships in 1983.
- In the 1983–84 season, Steve Davis won his third world title in four years, becoming the first player to successfully defend his championship title.
- The three-minute frame in the match between Tony Drago and Danny Fowler was the fastest in the history of ranking tournaments.
- Judd Trump is the youngest player to make a 147 break in official competition at the age of 14 years and 208 days.
- The final session of the match between K. Torbern and T. Griffiths at the 1983 World Championship was record-breaking in terms of length. The session lasted 6 hours and 25 minutes, with the match ending at 3:51 a.m.!
- In the 1993 season (at the age of 17), Ronnie O’Sullivan became the youngest player to qualify for the World Championship.
- Murty O’Donoghue was the first player to make a witnessed 147 break in 1934.
- Dennis Taylor won his first title, the Rothman’s Grand Prix, in 1984, three weeks after his mother’s death.
- In the 1985 Dulux British Open final between Kirk Stevens and Silvino Francisco, a non-British player contested the title of a ranking tournament for the first time.
- In 1927, Joe Davis received £6.10 for winning the World Championship.
- A total of 542 players entered the 1993 World Championship, compared to just two in 1931.
- John Spencer made the first 147 break in professional competition in a match against Cliff Thorburn at the Holstein Classic in 1979.
- In the 1992–93 season, Doug Mountjoy won a match at the Crucible before undergoing surgery to remove a malignant tumour.
- The 1985 World Championship final between Steve Davis and Dennis Taylor was watched by 18.5 million television viewers.
- Snooker balls were originally made of ivory.
- In 2005, at the age of 18 years and 1 day, Chinese snooker player Ding became the youngest winner of a professional tournament (the China Open).
- Alex Higgins became world snooker champion on his first attempt (in 1972). He received £480 for his victory (compare that to Shaun Murphy’s £250,000 in 2005).
- John Virgo had to accept defeat in two games after arriving 30 minutes late for the start of the final session of the Coral UK Championship in 1979.
- In 1990, Stephen Hendry, aged 21, became the youngest winner of the World Championship, defeating Jimmy White 18–12.
- Canada’s Cliff Thorburn (1980 world champion) and Ireland’s Ken Doherty (1997 world champion) are the only two champions not from the United Kingdom.
- Joe Johnson in 1986 and Shaun Murphy in 2005 became world champions, even though their chances of winning were estimated at one in 150.
- Jimmy White reached the World Championship final six times but never won. He came closest to the title in 1994, when he lost to Stephen Hendry 17–18.