Steve Davis

The title of this article is ambiguous. For more meanings, see Steve Davis (disambiguation) .

Steve Davis
birthday	22nd August 1957 (age 63)
place of birth	Plumstead
nationality	England
Nickname (s)	The Nugget The Legend Interesting Ginger Magician Romford Robot Romford Slim Stumble Ice-Cool
professional	1978-2016
Prize money	£ 5,613,536
Highest break	147 (1 ×)
Century Breaks	355
Main tour successes
World championships	6th
Ranking tournament victories	28
Minor tournament victories	-
World rankings
Highest WRL place	1 ( 83/84 - 89/90 )

Steve Davis doing a trick shot during the German Masters 2012

Steve Davis , OBE (born August 22, 1957 in Plumstead , London ) is a retired English snooker player . He was a professional player on the Snooker Main Tour from 1978 to 2016 and was considered the dominant player in the 1980s. Davis won six times at the World Snooker Championship and the UK Championship and three times the Masters and is therefore a member of the Triple Crown .

Career

Beginnings

Davis was born the son of bus driver Henry George "Bill" Davis and his wife Jean Catherine in London's working-class Plumstead district.

Davis first encountered snooker when his father visited the Lee Green Working Men's Club , where his father played snooker regularly. At the age of six he was given a snooker table for Christmas that was only a quarter the size of a normal snooker table. But although Davis initially practiced on it, he played football for several years. He regularly attended Charlton Athletic Games and trained at the Alexandra McLeod Junior School in Abbey Wood . His football career ended in the right winger position when he missed his first appearance in a game due to the flu.

In the summer of 1971, at the age of 14, he played on a real snooker table for the first time while on vacation at a holiday camp near St. Mary's Bay . He and his father spent almost all of his vacation at this table, and Davis was taking part in a snooker tournament for the first time. But in the first round he lost to an older man who was only defeated by his father in the final. As a result, Davis read the book How I play snooker by 15-time world champion Joe Davis and he was allowed to play on the tables of the Lee Green Working Men's Club .

Professional career

Steve Davis began his professional career in 1978 and was world champion six times in the 1980s (1981, 1983, 1984, 1987 to 1989). In all, he won 28 world ranking tournaments, the last in 1995. In the course of his career he won over 5,000,000  ₤ prize money and was later the head of the Association WPBSA Barry Hearn managed.

On January 11, 1982, he achieved the first televised maximum break in a game against John Spencer during the Lada Classics . As a bonus he received a Lada .

Almost three years later he had the highest ratings on British television when he faced Dennis Taylor in the World Cup final . Davis was already leading at 17:15, but Taylor forced the decision frame. Both players dueled, and after Davis punched Pink and only the black ball - worth 7 points - was on the table, the final was still not decided. After a long safety rally, Taylor missed the black and Davis had the chance of a fourth world title. But at the crucial moment he trembled and missed. At 12:20 a.m. Taylor punched the black ball in front of over 18 million viewers on TV.

Despite his dominance in the 1980s, combined with a large media presence, he was not always the darling of the public at the time. His face completely expressionless during the game and his almost machine-like way of playing earned him the sarcastic nickname Steve "interesting" Davis . Nevertheless, he was voted Sportsman of the Year in Great Britain in 1988 as the first and so far only snooker player .

In his last active years, his popularity increased with the audience, among other things, he showed more emotions in the game. By winning the semifinals of the UK Championship 2005 , he reached his 100th final on the Snooker Main Tour . He lost this against Ding Junhui 6:10. He temporarily reached third place in the provisional world rankings after having disappeared from the top 16 a few years earlier and only returned there in 2003.

In early 2006, he failed to play his qualifier for the China Open , so Ricky Walden won without a fight. Davis had never made a mistake like this in his career, which is why it received a lot of coverage in the sports press. However, he received no penalty from the World Snooker Association for this failure .

The goal he set himself to be in the top 16 of the world rankings on his 50th birthday, he achieved with 15th place at the end of the 2006/2007 season . For the 2008/2009 season he was listed as 29th in the world rankings. For the 2009/10 season he was able to improve again to 23rd place, but fell back to 44th place in the following season , only to drop out of the top 50 after the following season with ranked 51st . With his entry into the quarter-finals at the 2010 World Cup , he was the first player over 50 to achieve this in more than 20 years.

At the end of the 2013/14 season he retired from the Main Tour, but the WPBSA awarded him an Inventional Tour Card , so that he played on the Main Tour for two more years. During the 2016 World Cup, he announced his retirement from active snooker.

At the end of his career, he was successful in most of the tournaments. On April 10, 2016, he lost in qualifying for the World Snooker Championship against Fergal O'Brien . It was to be his last match as a professional, because seven days later he announced his retirement from active snooker live on a broadcast on BBC Sport . He justified this with the death of his father Bill, who had strongly supported him during his career, including as a coach. As a result, he was granted a lap of honor with the World Cup trophy by the Crucible Theater .

Davis was managed throughout his career by Barry Hearn , who also served as Chairman of the WPBSA for the last few years of his career. He is considered to be the first snooker player to become a millionaire through the sport .

Further life

Since December 2009 he has been a member of the board of the WPBSA .

Davis hosted a weekly radio show on Phoenix FM and appeared as a disc jockey at the Glastonbury Festival . He also appears regularly on the BBC as a commentator on snooker coverage.

Pool and trick shots

Play media file

Trickshot with a hidden ball.

Davis also plays pool successfully . At the 9-ball World Cup 2000 he reached the quarter-finals, where he was eliminated by Corey Deuel . He was also a member of the European team at the 9-ball pool tournament Mosconi Cup eleven times and won the Trickshot World Championship three times between 1994 and 1997 (1994, 1995 and 1997).

Honors

In 1988 he was voted British Sportsman of the Year as the only snooker player to date . He was named an MBE that same year, and in 2001 was named an OBE during The Queen's New Year Honors . In 2011 he was one of the first to be inducted into the newly established Snooker Hall of Fame .

Others

Steve Davis has been an avid chess player since early childhood and has worked, not least because of his popularity as a snooker player, as the co-author of a chess book and even as President of the British Chess Federation for a while . This is also worth mentioning insofar as the game of snooker is often compared to chess, because here, too, it is essential for a successful game to plan the sequence of individual actions in advance. In 2015 he wrote his autobiography, which, like one of his nicknames, is called Interesting .

Davis has two sons and is now divorced from his wife Judith. His son Greg attended Q School events in 2012.

In 2013, Davis participated in the thirteenth season of the British reality show I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! part.

Trivia

Davis is not related to the brothers and former snooker world champions Joe and Fred Davis or to the snooker player Mark Davis .

As part of the 2010 World Cup, he and Dennis Taylor played the last and decisive frame as an entertainment show on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of their legendary 1985 World Cup final .

successes

→ Main article : Steve Davis / Achievements

Davis won 28 tournaments with an impact on the world rankings and numerous other tournaments. These included six World Championships, six UK Championships and three Masters. The following table shows his finals in tournaments of the Triple Crown

output	year	competition	finalist	Frames
winner	1980	UK Championship	Alex Higgins	16: 6
winner	1981	World Snooker Championship	Doug Mountjoy	18:12
winner	1981	UK Championship	Terry Griffiths	16: 3
winner	1982	Masters	Terry Griffiths	9: 5
winner	1983	World Snooker Championship	Cliff Thorburn	18: 6
finalist	1983	UK Championship	Alex Higgins	15:16
winner	1984	World Snooker Championship	Jimmy White	18:16
winner	1984	UK Championship	Alex Higgins	18: 6
finalist	1985	World Snooker Championship	Dennis Taylor	17:18
winner	1985	UK Championship	Willie Thorne	16:14
finalist	1986	World Snooker Championship	Joe Johnson	12:18
winner	1986	UK Championship	Neal Foulds	16: 7
winner	1987	World Snooker Championship	Joe Johnson	18:14
winner	1987	UK Championship	Jimmy White	16:14
winner	1988	Masters	Mike Hallett	9-0
winner	1988	World Snooker Championship	Terry Griffiths	18:11
winner	1989	World Snooker Championship	John Parrott	18: 3
finalist	1989	UK Championship	Stephen Hendry	12:16
finalist	1990	UK Championship	Stephen Hendry	15:16
winner	1997	Masters	Ronnie O'Sullivan	10: 8
finalist	2005	UK Championship	Ding Junhui	6:10

Web links

Commons : Steve Davis  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Steve Davis in the snooker Database (English)
• Profile of Steve Davis on CueTracker
• nm0205506 in theInternet Movie Database(English)
• Player profile on snooker.org (English)
• Player profile on azbilliards.com (English)
• First Maximum Break on Television (by Steve Davis) on YouTube.com. Retrieved May 27, 2012.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Profile of Steve Davis on CueTracker (as of March 12, 2016)
2. ↑ 100 + Centuries. (No longer available online.) SnookerInfo, July 28, 2018, archived from the original on July 28, 2018 ; accessed on July 28, 2018 .  
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Shamoon Hafez: Steve Davis: Snooker great retires after 38-year career. (No longer available online.) BBC , April 17, 2016, archived from the original on August 8, 2018 ; accessed on September 8, 2018 .  
4. ↑ ^{a b} Steve Davis reitres from snooker. (No longer available online.) WPBSA April 17, 2016, archived from the original on July 28, 2018 ; accessed on July 28, 2018 (English).  
5. ^ ^{A b} Steve Davis: Interesting . 1st edition. Dragonstars Eventmanagement GmbH, London 2016, ISBN 978-3-00-053061-6 , p. 1−366 .
6. ↑ ^{a b} Desmond Kane: The numbers add up for the golden nugget. (No longer available online.) The National, April 17, 2009, archived from the original on July 24, 2018 ; accessed on July 24, 2018 (English).  
7. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Steve Davis. (No longer available online.) World Snooker , January 11, 2015, archived from the original on September 8, 2018 ; accessed on September 8, 2019 .  
8. ↑ Bill David passes away. (No longer available online.) WPBSA March 30, 2016, archived from the original on July 28, 2018 ; accessed on July 28, 2018 (English).  
9. ↑ Matias Peiroten: After 38 years: Snooker legend Steve Davis ends . (No longer available online.) Eurosport , April 17, 2016, archived from the original on July 28, 2018 ; accessed on July 28, 2018 (English).  
10. ↑ ^{a b} Steve Davis, OBE. (No longer available online.) Champions Speakers, archived from the original on September 12, 2018 ; accessed on September 12, 2018 (English).  
11. ↑ Westdeutsche Zeitung: Snooker is like chess with balls. Retrieved August 8, 2020 . 
12. ↑ Sarah Bull: An Olympic athlete, Miss Great Britain ... and Joey Essex: This year's full I'm A Celebrity ... Get Me Out Of Here! line-up is revealed. (No longer available online.) Daily Mail , November 13, 2013, archived from the original on July 28, 2018 ; accessed on July 28, 2018 (English).  
13. ↑ Davis and Taylor rerun 1985 classic. (No longer available online.) Morning Star , April 29, 2010, archived from the original on November 7, 2010 ; accessed on September 6, 2018 .