1977 World Snooker Championship

The cue sport of snooker was invented in 1875 by British Army soldiers stationed in India. Joe Davis won the first World Snooker Championship, which the Billiards Association and Control Council (BA&CC) organised in 1927. In the "modern" era of the sport, which started in 1969 when the World Championship reverted to a knockout format, snooker has become increasingly popular worldwide, especially in East and Southeast Asian nations such as China, Hong Kong and Thailand. Since 1977, the championship has been held at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England, which has become known as "the spiritual home of snooker". In the 1977 championship, 16 professional players competed in one-on-one snooker matches in a single-elimination format, each match being played over several . Watterson had business interests in the motor trade and recycling business, and since 1972 had also promoted snooker exhibition matches involving Higgins, Reardon, and, most often, Fred Davis and John Pulman. Pulman was staying with Watterson in August 1976 when he mentioned that the WPBSA had no sponsor, venue, promoter or television deal for the 1977 World Championship. Watterson, despite not having a venue or sponsor lined up, made an offer to the WPBSA to promote the championship, which he personally underwrote. The WPBSA accepted his bid in November 1976. Watterson chose the Crucible as the venue after his wife Carol saw a play there and recommended it, and he booked the venue at a cost of £6,600. After arranging the dates of television coverage with the BBC, in February 1977 Watterson persuaded Peter Dyke of 1976 championship sponsors W.D. & H.O. Wills to sponsor the 1977 edition under its Embassy cigarette brand; Embassy were hesitant to repeat their sponsorship because they had experienced problems dealing with the previous promoter and were not familiar with Watterson. Highlights of the semi-finals and final were broadcast on the national television channel BBC2. There were three of play scheduled each day except for 25, 27 and 30 April when there were two sessions. Up to the quarter-finals, there was play on two snooker tables concurrently. Two Karneham & Hillman Windsor Royal tables were installed in the arena; a freestanding wooden partition was used to divide the arena into two match areas. Prize fund The breakdown of prize money for 1977 was: • Winner: £6,000 • Runner-up: £2,000 • Semi-final: £1,200 • Quarter-final: £750 • Last 16: £350 • Highest break: £500 • Total: £17,000 == Tournament summary ==

, Sheffield (pictured during the 2024 World Snooker Championship) has been the venue for the World Snooker Championship since 1977. Qualifying The WPBSA first published official world rankings for players on the main tour for the 1976–77 season. Players' performances in the previous three World Snooker Championships—1974, 1975, and 1976—contributed to their points totals. These rankings were used for seedings for the tournament. As defending champion, Reardon was seeded first and was also number one on the ranking list. Originally, the top fourteen players were due to be seeded into the last-16 round, but the WPBSA members voted 11–10 to change this so that only the top eight players were exempted to the last-16. The draw for the tournament was conducted by journalist Janice Hale at Albany Hotel, Birmingham. The 1977 World Championship was the only ranking event of the 1976–77 season. Qualifying matches were scheduled from 28 March to 7 April 1977, and took place at Hounslow Civic Centre and Fisher's Snooker Centre, Acton. Fagan and Virgo, both playing in their first professional tournament, qualified to make their World Championship debuts. First round The first round took place from 18 to 21 April; each match was played over three sessions as the best of 25 frames. Reardon, who had won the championship each year from 1973 to 1976, was the bookmakers' favourite to win the tournament, with odds of 11/4. The 1973 runner-up Eddie Charlton was second-favourite at 7/2, followed by 1969 and 1971 champion John Spencer at 7/1. Reardon and Fagan each won four frames in their first session, before Reardon opened a 10–7 lead during the second session and won the match 13–7 the following day. Spencer was three frames behind Virgo at 1–4 and 4–7 but won three successive frames to equalise both times, and won the match 13–9. Davis later wrote that he felt "unaccountably out of touch", while Pulman "played better than I had seen for about five years". Charlton won seven of the first eight frames against David Taylor, made a 105 break in the 12th frame and progressed to the next round with a 13–5 win. Thorburn won seven successive frames during his 13–6 defeat of Rex Williams. Dennis Taylor concluded a 13–11 win against Perrie Mans with a break of 76, the highest of their match, in the 24th frame. Quarter-finals The quarter-finals were played as best-of-25-frames matches over three sessions on 23 and 24 April. Reardon was never ahead of Spencer, who won the match 13–6. The Snooker Scene match-report assessment said: "Even when the title was slipping away from [Reardon] he never seemed able to focus his concentration and stop making mistakes". Each player won four frames in the second session and then Taylor won the opening frame in the third session to lead 10–7. Mountjoy won the next two frames, each on the final black ball, but lost the 20th frame after he went the last black. Final The tournament's final took place from 28 to 30 April as the best of 49 frames, and was refereed by John Smyth. Spencer won his third world title by defeating Thorburn 25–21. and he extended his lead to 5–2 before Thorburn won four of the next five frames to leave the score at 6–6. Thorburn took the lead in the match for the first time by winning the first two frames of the evening session. He added the first two frames of the afternoon session to lead 15–11, but then Spencer won the next three frames. Snooker historian Clive Everton wrote Spencer "exploded two myths" by winning with a two-piece cue, a type of implement that was generally seen as suitable for pool but not snooker, and having only used it for two months, when most professional players thought it took many months to become proficient with a new cue. Thorburn also used a two-piece cue for the match as was common in his native Canada. An article in Snooker Scene contrasted Spencer's playing style in his earlier World Championship victories, which featured "aggressive" , to the way he played in 1977, which included fewer long pots and consistent mid-distance potting, and praised his "coolness and steadiness of nerve" and his choice of shots to play. The same magazine described Thorburn's strengths at the tournament as "concentration and consistency". Everton later wrote that Thorburn "admitted that he was psychologically not quite ready to win" a world championship. Thorburn himself commented in his 1987 autobiography, written with Everton, that towards the end of the match "I felt myself slipping... I don't think it was through nerves but it was all just a bit too much for me." Spencer wrote that he "felt that my determination had carried me through". ==Reception and legacy==

Having sessions in the morning, at 11 am, was unusual in professional snooker. Virgo later remarked that snooker players were "the sort of people who got up at that time." The crowd was seated closer to the players than at other tournaments, and, according to Taylor, many of the players disliked the two-table setup because of the lack of space. Thorne wrote that "The two-table set-up was very cramped and claustrophobic". Taylor himself liked the venue. He compared the atmosphere to a church, and thought that using the Crucible was "an inspired move." Reardon called the Crucible "fantastic, a proper venue." He added that "All the other venues weren't." In Spencer's 2005 autobiography, he wrote that "the Crucible did more for snooker than any player did." Thorburn also praised the venue for being "perfectly shaped... I was mesmerised to be there." Joe Davis considered the venue to be "an absolutely perfect setting", and the Billiards and Snooker Control Council referred to the 1977 championship as "in many ways the most successful ever staged." Over 20,000 audience tickets were sold for matches at the 980-seat Crucible, and the event made a surplus of £12,000. As of 2026, the championship has been held at the Crucible each year since 1977, and it is expected to continue there until at least 2045, apart from in 2029 when redevelopment works are scheduled. Embassy remained as the championship sponsors until 2005, when UK law prevented tobacco companies from sponsoring sporting events. Nick Hunter, executive producer of the BBC TV coverage, persuaded Aubrey Singer, the controller of BBC2, to televise the entire championship from 1978 onwards. In 2017, researchers estimated that the Championship had benefited Sheffield's economy by £100m over 40 years, and had an annual positive economic benefitof £2.6m. In 2025, Sheffield City Council assessed the economic benefit of the championship to the city as £4.5m a year. Before 1977, the Crucible Threatre had been struggling financially, and Tedd George, son of the Crucible's first artistic director Colin George, later wrote that staging the tournament raised the venue's profile and "secured the threatre's financial stability." == Main draw ==

The results for the tournament are shown below. The numbers in brackets denote player seedings and match winners are denoted in bold. {{Round16 Final Details for the final are shown below. Numbers in bold and with a symbol represent frame-winning scores. Numbers in brackets and italics represent breaks of 50 or more. ==Qualifying==

Results for the qualifying rounds are shown below. Bold text denotes match winners. == Century breaks ==

There were six century breaks at the championship. The highest break of the tournament was 135, which was made by John Spencer. • 135, 105 John Spencer • 111, 100 Cliff Thorburn • 105 Eddie Charlton • 102 Doug Mountjoy ==References==