Mike Hallett

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Mike Hallett
birthday 2nd July 1959 (age 61)
nationality EnglandEngland England
professional 1979–1997, 1998/99, 2000/01, 2004/05
Prize money £ 920,000
Highest break 139
Century Breaks 43
Main tour successes
World championships -
Ranking tournament victories 1
Minor tournament victories -
World rankings
Highest WRL place 6 ( 89/90 )

Mike Hallett (born July 2, 1959 ) is an English snooker player and sports commentator from Grimsby . Between 1979 and 2005 he played a total of 21 years on the professional tour .

Career

Beginnings and top 32 years

Mike Hallett is from Grimsby on the north east coast of England. Even as a teenager he was successful at the state level. He won the English U16 championship in 1975 and was U21 champion in 1978. He was twice a quarter-finalist in the northern group of the English Amateur Championship . In the 1979/80 season he took part in the professional tour for the first time. At the UK Championship he reached the second round. He also won a qualifying round at the World Cup , but did not make it into the bottom 24 of the main tournament. Instead, he defeated Canadian Cliff Thorburn , who had just become world champion, 4: 3 at the Pontins Camber Sands Open immediately after the World Cup . The following year he made it to round 3 of the UK Championship , at the World Cup he missed the main tournament again, but from this year he was among the top 32 in the world snooker rankings.

In the following years he confirmed this achievement with increasing number of participants in the professional tournaments without improving. In 1982 the main round of the World Championship was expanded to 32 players for the first time and Hallett made his debut at the Crucible Theater . At the Bass and Golden Leisure Classic he reached his first semi-finals in a professional invitation tournament and ended up third. In the 1982/83 season he made it to the round of 16 at the UK Championship for the first time and narrowly lost 8: 9 against Ray Reardon . In the meanwhile three ranking tournaments he did not get beyond the last 32. In 1983 he defeated the new world number one Steve Davis 5-2 at the Professional Players Tournament and made it to the last sixteen there as well as at the UK Championship and the Classic . The following year, the Grand Prix was the only ranking tournament in which he reached the round of 16. At an invitation tournament in Spain, the Costa Del Sol Classic , he had previously reached the final and lost 2: 5 to Dennis Taylor . Against Taylor, he also played at the 1986 World Cup in the first main round at the Crucible. With a 10: 6 win, he not only made it into the round of 16 for the first time, he also threw the defending champion out of the tournament. Before that, he had missed the last sixteen in 5 ranking tournaments during the season, so he was still on the spot in the ranking.

Promotion to the top 10

This changed in the 1986/87 season . When Grand Prix and the UK Championship , he was among the last 16, and at the World Cup , he defeated Tony Knowles and Silvino Francisco and came to the quarter-finals. This made him one of the top 16 in the world the following year. He started the season at the Australian Masters with a win over world number five Joe Johnson and reaching the final, which he lost 4-1 to Stephen Hendry . He then reached the semi-finals of a ranking tournament for the first time at the International Open , beating the number 2 in the world Jimmy White . But he was eliminated from the world number one Steve Davis . He also met Davis in the final of the Masters , for which he was qualified for the first time. However, he didn't win a single frame and lost with 0: 9. It was the only "whitewash" (to zero victory) in a Masters final. At the British Open he reached his first ranking final after a 9: 8 over John Parrott , which he lost again very clearly with 2:13 against Stephen Hendry. Together with Hendry, he also celebrated his first tournament success in 1987: They won the title as a doubles at the World Doubles Championship . After another round of 16 at the World Cup , in which he again went down 1:13 against Steve Davis , his fourth final followed at the end of the season at a non-ranking tournament, the Pontins Professional . Again a clear 1: 9 defeat followed, this time against John Parrott. In the 1988/89 season the series continued for the first time: Against Hendry he lost the New Zealand Masters 6-1 in the final. At the Fosters Professional , an invitation tournament in Ireland, the two met again in the final and this time Hallett finally won his first individual title with 8: 5. Later that season he made it to the final of the English Professional Championship in 1989 . He won the last edition of this championship of English professionals 9-7 against John Parrott. At the Canadian Masters , the European Open and the British Open he reached the semi-finals and in the World Cup quarter-finals he lost again significantly with 3:13 against Steve Davis. After the two most successful years of his career, he also achieved his best world rankings in 1989 with 6th place.

At the Hong Kong Open 1989 , the first ranking tournament in Asia, he defeated Stephen Hendry a second time and then Jimmy White and reached his second ranking final. He met the New Zealander Dene O'Kane and defeated him with 9: 8 and 61:40 points in the decision frame. It was the first and only ranking win for the Englishman in his career. After that, however, the success waned and he did not succeed in any other tournament to get beyond the quarter-finals. It was not until the Pontins Professional at the end of the season that he reached a final again. His opponent Stephen Hendry retaliated for the previous three defeats and won the tournament 9: 6. In 1990 a shoot-out tournament was played for the first time with its own rules and only one frame per game. Hallett played successfully until the final, where he lost to Darren Morgan . At the Asian Open and the Classic he reached the semi-finals and lost to Hendry and White respectively. At the Masters he was in the finals for the second time and had Stephen Hendry on the verge of defeat for a long time. But he could not utilize a 7-0 and 8-2 lead, he himself lost 7 frames in a row and the last and decisive one with 41:51. He also reached the final of the Pontins Professional at the end of the season and lost to Neal Foulds 6: 9. He had been in the final three times at the tournament in Prestatyn, Wales and three times he was defeated.

The later years until the main tour ended

Thanks to his consistent overall performance, he was able to stay in the top 8 until 1991. In the 1991/92 season he was eliminated six times in the first round of the ranking tournaments. The quarter-finals at the Classic was his best usable result. The game year was not bad at all, he won the Humo Masters in Antwerp with 9: 7 against Neal Foulds and the Scottish Masters with 10: 6 against Steve Davis. At the Belgian Challenge and the European Challenge - both also in Belgium - and at the Irish Masters he was in the semi-finals. However, nothing brought any world ranking points, so it fell back in the ranking and also out of the top 16. He was able to prevent the further crash in the following season with a quarter-finals at the Welsh Open 1993 , but with the top results it was also over in the non-ranking tournaments. Only once, at the Pontins Professional he was still in the semifinals. At the World Cup, he did not make it into the last 32 for the first time and after 11 years he did not make it into the Crucible. In Pot Black , a special format, he reached a final for the last time in August 1993, which he lost 2-0 to Steve Davis. He was only able to defeat his feared opponent 3 times in his career in 19 professional games. In the remainder of the 1993/94 season he did not get beyond the last 32 in the ranking tournaments and two rounds of 16 placements in the following year could not prevent him from falling out of the top 32 in 1995.

The descent continued in 1995/96, only once he reached the bottom 32. And in the following year there were only defeats at the beginning of all tournaments. His fall to 89th place also meant the loss of his professional status, because from 1997 a top 64 placement would have been necessary for further access to the professional tournaments. Although he took part in the Qualifying School , where more Main Tour seats were awarded, in the third tournament he lost the decisive game against Troy Shaw with 1: 5. Therefore, he was only left with the second-rate UK tour , which he did not succeed in either. 1998/99 he stepped back into the pre-qualification of professional tournaments, but never once reached the last 128. After another year on the UK tour he played 2000/2001 again in the big tournaments and made it after all, at the China Open yet once among the last 48 and at the UK Championship in round 3.

After the professional career

From 2001, three years followed on the Challenge Tour and a placement among the bottom 128 at the 2004 World Cup after he had survived 5 rounds of pre-qualification. In the 2004/05 season he played one last time on the Main Tour. He won a total of only two games and ended up in 91st place, finally losing his professional status. In the following 5 years he took part in the Pontin's International Open Series , which had replaced the Challenge Tour. He achieved decent results and at the 4th tournament in 2008 he even reached the final, which he lost 6-1 to Craig Steadman . 17th place in the 2008/09 Series was his best result and only the first 8 qualified for the Main Tour. In 2010 this qualification series also ended. In 2011, at the age of 51, he took part in the Q School again and was able to win a few more matches, but without coming seriously close to qualifying.

In the following years he played several tournaments of the new Players Tour Championship and survived the amateur qualification three times, only to lose in the first main round. He took part in the World Seniors Championship several times and enrolled again at the Q School in 2016 and 2017, but mostly lost his four first round matches significantly.

Mike Hallett also started out as a snooker commentator in the 1990s. For decades he accompanied the Snooker Premier League for Sky Sports and most of the Main Tour tournaments at Eurosport .

successes

Ranking tournaments:

Other professional tournaments:

Qualifying tournaments:

  • Finalist: PIOS (2008/09 - Tournament 4)

Pro-Am tournaments (for professionals and amateurs):

  • Winner: Pontins Spring Open (1991, 1993), Dutch Open (1989, 1993)

swell

  1. ↑ a b Profile of Mike Hallett at CueTracker
  2. ↑ Uk: 'Wonder Boy' Mike Hallett Wins Final of UK Under 21 Snooker , Reuters, December 12, 1978, archived on British Pathé, accessed May 20, 2018
  3. ↑ Snooker's greatest comeback: 'It took me six months to get over it' , Ismail Vedat, ESPN, January 17, 2014

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Hallett, Mike
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English snooker player
DATE OF BIRTH 2nd July 1959
PLACE OF BIRTH England