1985 World Snooker Championship


The 1985 World Snooker Championship was a professional ranking tournament in snooker that took place from 12 to 28 April 1985 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. Organised by the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association, the event was the ninth consecutive World Snooker Championship to be held at the Crucible, the first tournament having taken place in 1977. A five-round qualifying event for the championship was held at the Preston Guild Hall from 29 March to 5 April for 87 players, 16 of whom reached the main stage, where they met the 16 invited seeded players. The tournament was broadcast in the United Kingdom by the BBC, and was sponsored by the Embassy cigarette company. The total prize fund for the event was £250,000, the highest prize pool for any snooker tournament to that date. The winner received £60,000, which was the highest amount ever received by the winner of a snooker event at that time.
The defending champion was Englishman Steve Davis, who had previously won the World Championship three times. He met Northern Irishman Dennis Taylor in the final which was a best-of-35- match. Davis took an early 9–1 lead, but Taylor battled back into the match and drew level at 17–17, forcing a. The 35th frame was contested over the final, with the player able to the ball winning the world title. After Taylor missed three attempts to pot the black, Davis missed his only attempt to leave Taylor a relatively simple pot to win his sole World Championship. The match, often referred to as the "black ball final", is commonly considered to be the best-known match in the history of snooker and a reason for the surge in the sport's popularity in the 1980s and 1990s.
Canadian Bill Werbeniuk scored the championship's highest, a 143, in his first-round match. There were 14 century breaks compiled during the championship, with ten more in qualifying matches. This was the first professional snooker championship to introduce a ban on performance-enhancing substances, with all players in the main stage having to undertake drug tests. The final between Davis and Taylor holds the record for the most-viewed broadcast in the United Kingdom of a programme shown after midnight, with a peak of 18.5 million viewers for the match's final frame, breaking the existing records for the most-viewed sporting event and BBC2 programme.

Overview

The World Snooker Championship is a professional tournament and the official world championship of the game of snooker. Developed in the late 19th century by British Army soldiers stationed in India, snooker was popular in the United Kingdom before being introduced to Europe and the Commonwealth. The sport is now played worldwide, especially in East and Southeast Asian nations such as China, Hong Kong and Thailand.
The World Championship is organised by the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association. It features 32 professional players competing in one-on-one single-elimination matches, played over several. The players are selected to take part using a combination of the world snooker rankings and a pre-tournament qualification round. The first World Championship, in 1927, was won by Joe Davis in a final at Camkin's Hall in Birmingham, England. Since 1977, the tournament has been held at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield. The 1984 championship was won by England's Steve Davis, who defeated fellow countryman Jimmy White 18–16 in the final; this was Davis's third world championship win, following his victories in 1981 and 1983. The winner of the 1985 championship received a prize of £60,000 from a total of £250,000, the highest first prize amount for a snooker event to that date.
The tournament was the first snooker event to feature drug tests for the participants, as mandated by the WPBSA on 9 April 1985; the tests were proposed by WPBSA board member Barry Hearn. The event was broadcast by the BBC in the United Kingdom, with over 90 hours of coverage. The estimated cost for the fortnight's broadcast was reportedly £3 million. The championship was sponsored by the Embassy cigarette company.

Format

The championship was held from 12 to 28 April 1985 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England, the ninth consecutive World Championship to be held at the venue. It was the last ranking event of the 1984–85 snooker season. There were 103 entrants from the World Snooker Tour, with 32 participants in the competition's main draw. A five-round knockout qualifying competition with 87 players, held at Preston Guild Hall between 29 March and 5 April, produced the 16 qualifying players who progressed into the main draw to play the top 16 seeds. The draw for the tournament was made at the Savoy Hotel in London on 16 January 1985.
The top 16 players in the latest world rankings automatically qualified for the main draw as seeded players. As defending champion, Steve Davis was seeded first for the event; the remaining 15 seeds were allocated based on world rankings for the 1984–85 season. Matches in the first round of the main draw were played as best-of-19-frames. The number of frames needed to win a match increased to 13 in the second round and quarter-finals, and 16 in the semi-finals; the final match was played as best-of-35-frames.
Six former world champions participated in the main tournament at the Crucible: Ray Reardon, Steve Davis, John Spencer, Alex Higgins, Cliff Thorburn and Terry Griffiths. Four players made their world championship debuts, all via the qualifying event: Dene O'Kane, Eugene Hughes, Tony Jones, and Wayne Jones.

Prize fund

The event had a total prize fund of £250,000, an increase of £50,000 in the total prize pool from the previous year, and the winner received £60,000, an increase of £16,000 from the previous year. The prize amount was a new record high for snooker event. The breakdown of prize money for the tournament was:
  • Winner: £60,000
  • Runner-up: £35,000
  • Semi-finals: £20,000
  • Quarter-finals: £10,000
  • Last 16: £5,250
  • Last 32: £2,500
  • Qualifying groups runner-up: £1,500
  • Qualifying groups third place: £750
  • Highest break: £6,000
  • Maximum break: £60,000

    Tournament summary

Qualifying

The qualifying rounds for the event were played from 29 March to 5 April at the Preston Guildhall. The qualifying competition consisted of five knockout rounds, starting with 87 players. There were seven matches in the first round, bringing the number of remaining players to 80. The other four qualifying rounds each contained 16 matches, the winners of each round meeting the 16 higher-ranked players who had been seeded into the next round. The 16 winners from the fifth and final qualifying round met the top 16 seeds in the first round of the main competition.
All qualifying matches were played as best-of-19-frames. John Dunning was seeded into the third round of qualifying, where he played his first return match since his heart attack at the 1984 Grand Prix; he lost the match to Wayne Jones, 6–10. Danny Fowler made the highest break of the qualifying competition, scoring a 137 in his 10–0 victory over Jim Donnelly in the fourth round, before losing 2–10 to John Parrott in the fifth. Fred Davis, aged 71 and eight-time champion between 1948 and 1956, defeated Robert Chaperon 10–9 in the fourth round of qualifying but lost 6–10 to Rex Williams in the fifth.

First round

The first round of the championship, from 12 to 17 April, featured 32 players competing in 16 best-of-19-frames matches in two sessions; each seeded player competed against a qualifier. The first match to finish was between second seed Tony Knowles and qualifier Tony Jones. Knowles won four straight frames before he was pegged back to 4–4. Jones took four of the next five frames to lead 8–5 but eventually lost 8–10. As part of an initiative to remove performance-enhancing substances, drug tests were performed for the first time during the event; Knowles was the first player tested.
A series of articles in the Daily Star about drug abuse in the championship was based on statements reportedly by Silvino Francisco. Francisco trailed 1–8 after the first session of his first-round match against 11th seed Dennis Taylor, and lost the match 2–10. At a press conference held afterwards, World Snooker chairman Rex Williams said that there was no evidence of drug use in the sport, and Francisco apologised to Kirk Stevens, claiming that the statements in the article were a "total lie".
Top seed and defending champion, Steve Davis, won his match against Neal Foulds 10–8 to reach the second round. Only two unseeded players won their first-round matches: Patsy Fagan defeated 12th seed Willie Thorne 10–6 and John Parrott defeated 13th seed John Spencer 10–3. Spencer was diagnosed with myasthenia gravis shortly after the tournament; his vision was affected and he won only two matches all season. After being defeated twice during the season by Eugene Hughes, six-time champion and fifth seed Ray Reardon won 10–9 against Hughes on a.
In a low-scoring match between ninth seed Alex Higgins and Dean Reynolds, neither player produced a break of over 30 points in the first three frames. Reynolds won just the fifth frame of the opening session, Higgins taking an 8–1 lead and eventually winning 10–4. John Virgo led tenth seed Tony Meo 5–4 after the first session, but won just one frame in the second session to lose 6–10. In a press conference after the match, Virgo said: "I don't think Tony played well enough to beat me. It was the run of the balls that beat me. That's the way it has been for me for six years. I can't explain it. I practise hard. I play well, but sometimes that is not enough. You need a lot of luck in this game and I didn't get any at all."
Although fourth seed Kirk Stevens defeated Ray Edmonds 10–8, snooker pundit Clive Everton said that his standard of play was not that of a top-four player and Edmonds "made work". In a slow first session, Rex Williams and eighth seed Terry Griffiths played seven frames; Griffiths led 6–1 after three hours and 38 minutes, eventually winning the match 10–3. Bill Werbeniuk, who had not won a match all season, defeated Joe Johnson 10–8 and scored a 143 break in the tenth frame – the third-highest break at the championship at that time.
Third seed Cliff Thorburn defeated Mike Hallett, 10–8; 15th seed Doug Mountjoy defeated Murdo MacLeod, 10–5; 16th seed David Taylor defeated Dene O'Kane, 10–4; and sixth seed Eddie Charlton defeated John Campbell, 10–3, in an all-Australian tie.