World Snooker Championship 1978 – Throwback

Continuing with the World Championship Throwbacks, we arrive at the year 1978 where the Crucible holds the second WSC following a successful event in the prior year. John Spencer was the defending champion and aimed to keep that crown. Little did he know (along with the rest of us) was that he would be the first to succumb to what is now commonly known as the ‘Crucible Curse’.

This championship was significant because of the players involved. As mentioned earlier, John Spencer sought to defend his crown however fell short in the first round to eventual runner-up, Perrie Mans (13-8). Spencer could at least take some solace in doubling his tournament earnings by compiling the highest break of 138. Willie Thorne, Alex Higgins and Doug Mountjoy are also among those that fell in the first round.

Fred Davis famously reached the semi-finals of the WSC in 1978 at age 64, watched by his brother Joe. Davis beat Dennis Taylor, Patsy Fagan as well as John Virgo in qualifying to reach his last semi-final appearance in a World Championship. There would be a battle for third place between the semi-finalists which Eddie Charlton would win in a best-of-13 (first to 7) contest. Davis would reach the quarter-finals in the following year then struggle to get to these later stages as the years went on.

The 1978 final would be contested by 5x pre-Crucible champion, Ray Reardon who fought to secure a world title at Sheffield, which would be home to the WSC for at least the next 40 years; and Perrie Mans, who dominated the South African Professional Championship and would achieve one of his career highlights by reaching the final of the World Championship.

The final was played over a best-of-49 (first to 25) match, which would be one of the last WSC’s to be contested over a longer format. It was a closely fought contest following the first day and after the score-line reached 10-10, Reardon started to pull away at 13-11, 18-14 and eventually 25-18 as he further etched his names into the snooker history books.

This victory would secure Reardon’s sixth World Championship trophy, a number that would only be matched or passed by the likes of Steve Davis, Stephen Hendry and Ronnie O’Sullivan in the decades that followed. Reardon became the oldest winner of the WSC at 45 years old, a record previously held by Joe Davis. Despite having successful ventures in the World Championships to follow, 1978 would be the last year that Reardon lifted the trophy as he showed his class during this tournament proving that venue was irrelevant to him and that he was indeed, the best.

WSC 1978 was the first championship to be fully covered by the BBC, with an overwhelmingly positive audience response (close to 7 million viewers). It was a response such that, it required TV scheduling be cleared in order to broadcast the final live for those at home to witness.

Fun fact: Ray Reardon was 7-2 down to Doug Mountjoy in the first round, before mounting a comeback that would see him through to the second round with a 13-9 victory.

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Snooker Practice Routines/Drills

Whether you’re a complete beginner or even an intermediate snooker player (however in this instance, more likely a beginner) you may find your typical practice routine to become quite stagnant and repetitive. Whilst consistent practice is the key to improving your fundamentals and break-building, perhaps you can add or try some of these methods to mix up your practice sessions.

If you’re completely new to the game and are looking for ways of practicing and improving, then some of the routines below may be quite useful to you. The methods below exclude the line-up or ‘T’ drill which are probably the most common routines for practice.

Black off the spot

A very simple exercise – place the black on the spot, pot it. Rinse and repeat. Wherever the cue ball ends up, continue attempting to pot the black from there. This is a useful routine to practice soft screw and stun shots in order tighten up your cue ball control. Once you become more advanced, you can attempt using one cushion only to continue playing for the black.

Pot Quiz

If you watch the segments during the intervals of the World Championship, you’ll see John Parrott playing a mini-game with the professionals where they aim to pot all 15 reds and the black in the fastest time possible. Whilst it’s all fun and games, it’s actually a useful way of keeping close control of the cue ball and efficiently navigate your way through an open table.

Put the reds in a 3x5 layout from the blue spot to the black spot, and the black on the brown spot. The aim is to pot all the reds then the black in as fast a time as possible. What’s your fastest time?

Long straight blue

Place the blue on the spot and the cue ball a fair distance behind it in order to leave yourself a long, straight blue into one of the corner pockets. Practicing this shot will improve your straight cueing and give you the confidence to play the long blues to corner pockets in order to keep a break going. How many can you pot in a row?

Cueing on the baulk line/colour spots

Something that is useful right before you go into your main practice and drills is to place the cue ball on the baulk line and spend some time cueing up and down the line, ensuring the cue ball returns to you along the baulk line. This will make sure that you’re cueing well and straight without placing unintentional side on the shot, which of course you would notice if the cue ball returns off-line.

This is a routine that Steve Davis would do before his sessions and to add an extra challenge if you feel you’ve mastered this is to go the full length of the table, this time using the colour spots as reference. You could set yourself a target of 5 or 10 in a row (or a pre-determined time limit) before you continue practice.

Shot-to-Nothing

If you can improve your consistency at shot-to-nothings, you will find yourself creating more opportunities for yourself rather than waiting for your opponent to leave you amongst the balls. While practicing close cue ball control is paramount, if you can practice getting yourself in those positions, it should pay dividends in the long run. Practice shot-to-nothings from a variety of positions until you can confidently pot (similar to the long blue) and change up the angles so there won’t be too many surprises to you in a real game scenario.

Of course, there are a countless number of routines and drills that you could practice and this just shines a light on a handful of them, so expect a follow-up showing a selection of different routines in the future. It also goes without saying how important the safety game is to snooker, so don’t neglect practicing this. There will be a Short post in the future on various exercises you can perform to improve on this aspect of the game so stay tuned for those!

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Memorable Hits - Jimmy's Banana Brilliance

The 1984 Masters is remembered for a number of reasons. And most of those reasons often overshadow the actual result of the match. Whether it’s Kirk Stevens’s white suit or the occasion of making the third televised 147 break, these are likely the memories that fans remember of this entire match and tournament. However, one of snooker’s most Memorable Hits took place at the end of this match which I wanted to look at today.

And this was made by Stevens’ opponent, Jimmy White. If you didn’t know already – spoiler alert – but White ended up winning this semi-final match 6-4, and then proceeded to win the Masters tournament. In response to Stevens’ maximum break, White hit back with a century break of his own to close out the match. But the exhibition pink he potted at the end of the frame left everyone in awe and excitement.

This shot was a prime example of the ‘banana shot’ in which the cue ball is hit with so much screw (extreme bottom), or in some cases top spin, to cause the cue ball to travel in a trajectory/arc similar to the shape of a banana. In this case, White’s shot caused the cue ball to travel down the table in a backwards C-like pattern. But where exactly did he strike the cue ball?

The first component of this shot is indeed, the screw/bottom. It’s obvious where you need to strike the cue ball for this to happen although, for a shot that requires extreme backspin such as this one, things can go wrong. White was aiming as far down on the cue ball as humanly possible. Aim any higher, you won’t achieve the desired backspin, or it can turn into a stun shot if struck incorrectly. Aim any lower, then the cue ball is flying into the audience.

You know a deep screw shot is effective where the initial reaction off the object ball starts off slow (which some commentators refer to as a slight pause), but very quickly speeds up due to the amount of backspin generated. This is only achieved when the cue ball is struck to perfection; and White was an expert at getting action out of a cue ball.

The second component of this shot observes which side of the cue ball White struck in order to get it to rebound off the two cushions in the way it did. If you replay the shot, the cue ball seems to bounce off the first cushion normally, but when it contacts the black cushion, a couple of things happen. Firstly, the pace of the cue ball slows down dramatically. Secondly, the angle that the cue ball rebounds is in more of a straight line as opposed to the natural angle which would suggest it go nearer the black in more of a ‘v’ pattern.

This is a result of applying right-hand side on the shot in addition to the screw. The right-hand side in effect, ‘checks’ the cue ball when it bounces off the second cushion thereby, slowing the pace of the cue ball as well as creating that angle when it rebounds off the second cushion. If left-hand side was applied the cue ball would have likely gone above the black, if not around it.

The reason this shot was so magnificent was because of the way it was executed. This shot was an example of the perfect cue action required in order to get that kind of response from the cue ball. These kinds of shots are rarely played due to their technical difficulty, so you mainly see them when the frame is safe however, it doesn’t take away from the spectacle of a perfect arc achieved from a well struck shot. And there wasn’t a person better than White at manufacturing this kind of shot, as he demonstrated in that same clearance as he banana’d the cue ball back up the table on the final black.

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How Much Did Stephen Hendry Win During The 1990s?

Stephen Hendry was the Undisputed King of the 1990s. Match after match, win after win and title after title, Hendry reigned supreme in a manner and with a win-rate that elevated his status to one of the, if not THE, all-time greatest. ‘Peak-90s’ Hendry is often what many refer to when referencing the success of the seven-time World Champion, but just how much did Hendry win during this decade?

Out of Hendry’s total 36 ranking titles, 27 (75%) came during this decade. This includes his momentous five ranking events in the 1990/91 season (click here to read about that) as well as his 11 ranking final win streak between 1993 and 1997, matched only by Mark Selby. Hendry reached a total 38 ranking finals during the 1990s (looking at calendar years, not seasons), which gave him a ranking final win rate of 71%. Alternatively, you could look at it as Hendry winning 7 out of 10 ranking finals he would reach.

Hendry’s success with non-ranking events were just as triumphant. He was able to secure a further 27 non-ranking trophies to his name out of the 40 finals he reached, giving a 67.5% win rate in finals. When you combine this with his ranking victories, during the 1990s Hendry was able to win 69% of finals he competed in. It’s actually quite impressive considering if you look at his record, it suggests that Hendry was winning at least five tournaments each season, which was pretty much the case every year (particularly in the former half of the decade).

Nearly all of Hendry’s Triple Crown success came during the 1990s, a factor that firmly places him as the greatest of all time in the eyes of many fans. Hendry established his legacy as he clinched his famous 7 World Championships, 5 Masters and 4 UK Championships during his period of dominance. What makes this astonishing is that this single-handedly matches the combined efforts of the Class of ’92 in the decades that followed. Of course, there is always going to be an argument towards level of competition, but that can’t take away from this formidable win rate.

Stephen Hendry did a lot more to contribute to snooker aside from his winning streaks. He changed the way the game was played (click here to read about that) and pioneered the aggressive break-building approach to snooker we currently observe nowadays. He took the level set by Steve Davis and others before him and raised the bar to evolve the game to the standard we’re used to seeing today.

Fun fact – out of the 54 tournaments won by Hendry, 16 of them were majors. This means that nearly one-in-three wins resulted in a Triple Crown for the legend.

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