Just one more part after this and then Snooker Shots will be done for the season! You got to reach double figures!

Since the World Snooker Championships are just around the corner, there are a number on in this section. Enjoy!

Barry Hawkins vs. Dominic Dale (2014 World Championships)

It’s always nice and refreshing to see emotion from any snooker player. It shows how much the sport and winning really means to them.

Barry Hawkins was on top in the early stages of the match, hitting in many half-centuries as well as a break of 134. At 9-3 and 11-5 up, you would think that the match was dead and buried. However, Dominic Dale had other ideas. He managed to win seven frames on the bounce to be leading 12-11, one frame away from reaching the semi-finals.

He wasn’t given a chance in the final two frames, as he failed to score a single point. The Hawk scored 66 and 65 breaks to win the final two frames and to win the match. The video above was the pink that won him the match. I didn’t appreciate the lady laughing but who cares? Barry Hawkins showed bottle to not completely crumble and resisted a huge comeback.

Thepchaiya Un-Nooh vs. Kurt Maflin (2016 Paul Hunter Classic)

This shot may look fairly ordinary. It is a brilliant shot on the red to go round the houses, where he is perfectly on the black. He had to get to the black too. Why? Because he was going for his first maximum.

Thepchaiya Un-Nooh is famous for being THE quickest player on the circuit. Quicker than Trump, Lisowski and even O’Sullivan. But during the 2015/2016 season, he was in the spotlight for the wrong reasons. In the 2015 UK Championship, he missed out on his first 147 on the final black against eventual winner Neil Robertson. Remarkably, in the same season, he missed the final black AGAIN. His second, failed attempt came during the World Championship Qualifiers final round against Anthony McGill.

This GIF was third time lucky for Un-Nooh. Yes, you will be relieved to hear that he made his first maximum in the Paul Hunter Classic. He went on to make his second maximum in the 2018 English Open.

Mark Allen vs. Matthew Stevens (2011 World Championships)

This is the typical one where there is no story behind the shot, but it’s an incredibly brilliant positional shot from Mark Allen.

What’s amazing about it is not only because he managed to go around the table to get position on the brown. Allen needed most of the colours just to stay in the match as one mistake and Stevens would have won!

Judd Trump vs. Martin Gould (2011 World Championships)

To be honest, there are a number of shots Judd Trump ‘made’ in the 2011 World Championship alone. But this one takes the cake. This was a year when the Juddernaut brought his brand of ‘naughty snooker’. Also, with incredible amounts of cue power to boot.

This one is an exhibition shot and it’s a wonderful cannon to bring the reds into play. What is incredible is that the cue ball didn’t even touch the cushion. How on earth he got so much cue power and spin to do that, I don’t know.

Ronnie O’Sullivan vs. Mark Williams (2008 World Championship)

Ronnie O’Sullivan has made a record-breaking fifteen professional maximums. The most recent one he made was in 2018 and as much as we would like to talk the fast maximum against Mick Price in 1997, this is the one I am not going to talk about. We are talking about a maximum, where he made one of the best positional shots in the game. It was his ninth in his career and his third at the Crucible. But enough with the stats….

It was often regarded as the ‘best’ maximum break and it led to Dennis Taylor to proclaim him as a ‘genius’. This particular shot was the highlight. He was almost straight on the black and he had to hit it with so much side and power to delicately cannon the red in place. He generated so much angle from that shot and did very well to control it too. Also, the pink was not in the way of the rest of the break. A black and a fist pump later, he beat Mark Williams 13-7.

He went on to win the tournament and his third World Championship title, with Hendry describing him at the time as “the best in the world by a country mile.” Not bad for a few days work!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3Zyd_OihWs