Cliff Thorburn

Cliff Thorburn
birthday	16th January 1948 (age 72)
place of birth	Victoria
nationality	Canada
Nickname (s)	The grinder
professional	1972-1996
Prize money	£ 980,598
Highest break	147 (2 ×)
Main tour successes
World championships	1
Ranking tournament victories	2
Minor tournament victories	-
World rankings
Highest WRL place	1 ( 81/82 )

Clifford Charles Devlin "Cliff" Thorburn (born January 16, 1948 in Victoria , British Columbia ) is a former Canadian snooker player who in 1980 won the World Snooker Championship for the only time .

Career

Thorburn became the first so-called Overseas World Champion in 1980 , i.e. the first world champion who did not come from the United Kingdom . He won the final 18:16 against the Northern Irishman Alex Higgins . Three years earlier, the snooker professional, known for his slow game, was in the final of the first World Snooker Championship at the Crucible Theater . However, he lost this at 12:25 against John Spencer , who won his third title.

In the round of 16 of the World Snooker Championship in 1983 against Terry Griffiths , Thorburn scored the first maximum break at a world championship and the second official maximum break ever in the fourth frame . This match went down in history because the last session was only decided at 3:51 local time (Thorburn won 13:12), making it the longest match in the history of the World Snooker Championship. In that year Thorburn also reached his third and last final of a world championship, but lost it 6:18 against Steve Davis .

His second and final victory in a ranking tournament was in 1985 with the Matchroom Trophy .

The last time Thorburn qualified for the World Cup was in 1994 , but lost in the first round 9-10 to Nigel Bond after he had already led 9-2. Thorburn has not been active on the Snooker Main Tour since 1996 , but still plays in Trickshot tournaments from time to time.

Trivia

The Canadian was interested in making the sport of snooker more popular worldwide and mainly traveled through Asia on this assignment . During one of his trips through the People's Republic of China , the term Chinese Snooker, which is still jokingly used today, came about . This means a type of game in which an object ball does not block the path of the game ball as in a real snooker, but lies close to the other side of the game ball and makes it difficult to guide the cue.

In 2014 he became the first Canadian to be inducted into the Snooker Hall of Fame . He is only the second non-European member after Neil Robertson (AUS) to receive this honor.

Web links

Commons : Cliff Thorburn  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Cliff Thorburn in the Snooker Database (English)
• Profile of Cliff Thorburn on CueTracker

Individual evidence

1. ^ Career-Total-Statistics on: Cuetracker.net.