Kyren Wilson holds off Jak Jones to win his first World Snooker Championship
Kyren Wilson and his two sons celebrating after victory. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian
Snooker has a new grandmaster of the baize: but unlike so many of his predecessors, the story of Kyren Wilson has been far from a straightforward one.
As the ticker tape rained down over the 32-year-old on Monday eveningand he fulfilled his childhood dream by becoming snooker’s newest world champion, Wilson would have been forgiven for thinking back to the bumps in the road which brought him to this point. The boy who was convinced to take up snooker as a six-year-old by Peter Ebdon has not done it the easy way.
At the age of 19, Wilson fell off the professional tour after just a solitary season among the elite. He returned to his hometown of Kettering, combining practice sessions with a job behind a bar at Barratts in nearby Northampton, the venue where he used to pot balls and dream of squaring off against the world’s best players.
On two separate occasions Wilson tried – and failed – to reclaim his place on the tour at Q School, essentially becoming an amateur player. But as his nickname emphasises, Wilson is a warrior and here, having already fallen short in the biggest game of them all against Ronnie O’Sullivan four years ago, this time he was able to go one step further and be crowned champion of the world.
Nobody, not even the sport’s experts, would have predicted this being Wilson’s year, though. He has not won a ranking event all year and although he arrived in Sheffield a seed, he was far from one of the favourites. But over the course of the past fortnight, Wilson has displayed the play and temperament that has led so many to tip him as a future world champion for years.
You have to lose one to win one, so they say: and Wilson proved his pre-match prediction of being better prepared after the pain of his defeat to O’Sullivan in the 2020 final in a third-full Crucible due to the impact of the pandemic came true. It is a wonderful lesson to all; barely a decade after falling off the tour, Wilson is world champion, having never given up.
In truth, this year’s final between Wilson and the impressive qualifier, Jak Jones, went a long way towards being decided in Sunday’s opening session. Nothing was won at that stage, but with Wilson establishing a 7-1 lead, he was essentially able to hold Jones at arm’s length for the remainder of the final.
Jones won Sunday’s evening session 5-4, and the pair split the eight frames on Monday afternoon. The Welshman certainly regathered his composure after that disastrous opening session but Wilson knew he was in control throughout. He began the final session 15-10 ahead and Jones needed the biggest comeback in final-session history to prevail.
When Wilson edged a scrappy opening frame to move two away from the title, you wondered if the Welshman’s chances had finally run dry. But he responded with his first century break of the final to narrow the gap to five again.
The 28th frame of the match felt like the most significant. Jones cleared the colours amidst a back-and-forth exchange to force a respotted black, before missing a simple pot to move within four. Wilson then capitalised, potting the black off three cushions to move to the verge of becoming champion of the world.
But as has been the case throughout Wilson’s whole career, the final steps on his road to glory in Sheffield weren’t simple. Breaks of 67 and 96 – the latter of which was a genuine 147 attempt before Jones missed the 13th red – clawed it back to four before another of 53 made it 17-14. Suddenly, every time Wilson approached the table, he appeared riddled with finish-line nerves.
Eventually though, Wilson kept his nerve. His two breaks of 29 and 42 in frame 32 weren’t the best of his career, but they were the most important. The release of emotion as he roared out loud before bursting into tears when potting the winning balls underlined how much it meant to a player who has scrapped and fought so hard all career long.
Wilson graciously admitted in the aftermath of his 2020 final defea: “The night belongs to Ronnie.” This time though, in a packed-out auditorium, the night – and indeed the sport of snooker – belonged to a player who has reached the summit the hard way. You cannot argue he doesn’t deserve it.