The 2021-2022 professional snooker season ended, as is tradition, with the world title dispute at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield (England) from April 16 to May 2, both inclusive. In this article we tell you everything about the World Snooker Championship.
2022 Snooker World Championship
In the 2022 edition of the World Snooker Championship, the top 16 in the world ranking took part as top seeds along with the 16 classified applicants from the preliminary rounds played between 128 snooker players at the beginning of April in the same English town, but in this case at the facilities of the English Institute of Sport.
Snooker has been the most professionalized billiards modality for some decades, which is why some of the main media have turned to broadcasting it live. This is the case of the prestigious BBC for the entire United Kingdom, the Eurosport channels in the rest of the European continent, as well as the production company Matchroom Sport itself through its streaming pay-per-view platform. Also, the financial endowment was at the height of what has become usual, the not insignificant amount of almost 2.4 million pounds (GBPs) of which 500,000 the champion earns.
Among the list of top favorites was the four-time world champion and defending champion, the English Mark Selby. But things were not going to go his way this time and he fell in the round of 16 by a score of 13-10 against the Chinese Yan BingTao. It was the great moment of the also English Ronnie O’Sullivan, considered by most analysts and fans as the GOAT (Great of All Time), who as usual is among the great favorites to win any event on the World Snooker Tour calendar.
The excitement begins after the semi-finals: duel of geniuses
Until reaching the semifinals, Ronnie O’Sullivan comfortably defeated fellow Englishman David Gilbert 10-5, Northern Ireland’s Mark Allen 13-4 and Scotsman Stephen Maguire 13-5. Meanwhile, the other two members of the legendary “Class of ’92”, that is, the superstars who made the jump to the professional circuit back in 1992, the Scotsman John Higgins and the Welshman Mark Williams, did the same with some difficulty more than O ‘Sullivan but with the same result.
Thus, the “Class of ’92” composed by veterans O’Sullivan, Higgins and Williams along with the best player emerged in past decade, the Englishman Judd Trump, were going to face each other in the semifinals of the most prestigious championship of the season. The four world champion players in previous editions, O’Sullivan six times, Higgins four times, Williams three times and Trump once. A true luxury for all fans.
As usual, the event will be played from the semifinals in a single table, instead of two at the same time arranged until the quarterfinals. The pressure is greater and the distance at which the matches are played is stratospheric compared to other billiards disciplines, with matches lasting several sessions over two days. Specifically, the semifinals are played to the best of 33 frames (games) and the final to the best of 35.
O’Sullivan faced Higgins in the first semi-final and the match started and ended absolutely dominated by O’Sullivan with a final score of 17-11 with no chance of victory for the Scot.
In the other semifinal, the third member of the “Class of ’92”, the Welshman Williams, faced the new sensation of snooker, the Englishman Trump: here the tie was very close until the end. After an overwhelming start by the Englishman who posted a 9-2 run, which suggested the worst for Williams‘ interests, he managed to pull from his veterany to go ahead 15-16 but he was unable to complete the comeback and finally lost 17 -16, a comeback that would have been the most important in the history of the professional snooker world championship.
The World Snooker Championship Final
So we already had a final match to the story and the one desired by most fans: the best player of all time Ronnie O’Sullivan against the emerging star Judd Trump, both possessing a prodigious offensive game.
Leading up to the event, Ronnie O’Sullivan had the additional pressure and/or motivation, depending on how you look at it, to break various historical snooker records held by various legends of the sport from different eras.
To be honest, Ronnie did not disappoint in this regard and beat them all, starting by becoming world champion again for the seventh time against Judd Trump with a relatively loose score of 18-13, thus equalizing the seven that seemed unattainable in the 90s achieved by Scotsman Stephen Hendry.
He also equaled the 30 appearances in the final phase of the world championship achieved in his day by the English legend Steve Davis, the 20 participations in the quarterfinals, the 13 participations in the semifinals, the 21 triple crown titles (world championship, UK Open and masters) and if that were not enough, he reached victory number 74 in the final phase of the world championship, snatching this record from Stephen Hendry as well. In which his day was his coach Ray Reardon also lost his personal record for the oldest player to win the final phase of the world championship, another record now held by Ronnie O’Sullivan, who has achieved it in three different decades, one more of the broken records.
The only challenge that Ronnie O’Sullivan did not achieve this time, and that he did achieve in the past, is the feat of winning a frame for the highest possible score, which is 147 points in a single inning and, as difficult as it is to achieve it the sponsors award an additional 40,000 pounds (GBP) to the player who achieves it. This time it was the Australian Neil Robertson who achieved it, another of the greats of the old school who becomes part of a select list of the few players who have achieved it during the celebration of an edition of the world championship.
From Barcelona Pool Billiards Academy we congratulate Ronnie O’Sullivan for this long-awaited seventh world title and all the new records achieved, congratulations!
If you couldn’t see the World Pool Championship or would like to share it with other pool enthusiasts like you, from the Barcelona Pool Billiards Academy we want to remind you that at the academy we have a 135-inch projector designed, in part, for this purpose.