Snooker has produced some wonderful and talented stars over the years.
But the man who possibly transformed the game more than ever is probably less well known.
Snooker’s headline makers and dominant stars over the decades include Ronnie O’Sullivan, Stephen Hendry, Jimmy White, Steve Davis, Ray Reardon and Alex Higgins.
And of course it is right they take the headlines. Their talents on the table have been adored by snooker fans across the globe and earned them millions in prize money.
But for some of them (or maybe all), their fortunes in the sport may not have happened if it was not for one man’s actions.
A conversation between snooker promotor and player Mike Watterson and his wife Carole in the late 1970s is now written in snooker folklore. It was a huge, huge moment in the sport’s history.
Kerry Packer is well known for reinventing cricket with World Series Cricket in the 1970s. It is said Sky Sports changed the UK footballing landscape with ground-breaking live coverage and analysis of the Premier League.
Watterson, it could be argued, is snooker’s own transformation figure. If his wife had never visited the Crucible then who knows what snooker would look like today.
It all started when Watterson’s wife watched a play at Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre in 1977. Afterwards she told him that it was the perfect venue for snooker.
Carole’s thoughts turned out to be a master stroke and changed the game forever.
Watterson created ‘the home of snooker’
Watterson visited the theatre himself and quickly agreed with his wife’s observation. He then worked to turn it all into reality. After negotiations with the Crucible and the WPBSA, the World Championship was staged there for the first time in 1977.
Decades on and the Crucible is still snooker’s proud home. It has seen some of the best sporting drama. The famous 1985 black ball final with more than 18 million people watching on TV is one of snooker’s biggest and most talked about moments.
The tight Sheffield venue has also seen the likes of Steve Davis and Stephen Hendry dominate the sport. And more recently Ronnie O’Sullivan, argued the greatest player of all time, winning seven world titles.
Watterson also got other major snooker events off the ground, including the UK Championship and the British Open.
After Watterson passed in 2006, Barry Hearn and Jason Ferguson issued a joint statement. It said: “Without him, the World Championship may never have been staged at the Crucible. And he played a vital role in the creation of many other tournaments.”
There’s been endless speculation that the World Championship may soon leave the Crucible over fears it has become too small (capacity of less than 1,000) nowadays to meet the modern demands for players and spectators.
But messing with the tradition of the game is unsettling to many. It is the Crucible’s tense and packed atmosphere that makes the World Championship so special to play in and to win.
That tradition started with Watterson’s vision following that chat with his wife.
