But Walker is counting on a quicker brand of the game known as Super6, with fewer balls and shorter matches, to make it more appealing worldwide.
Snooker is already reaping the benefits in China. A first-round match between Ding Junhui and Liang Wenbo during the world championship drew an estimated 100 million television viewers in China, according to Walker.
Critics say that the next wave of sponsorship will not come unless snooker rediscovers some of the characters who made it so popular, like the fiery Irishman Alex Higgins, known as “Hurricane,” and Jimmy White, nicknamed “Whirlwind.” Even the quiet Steve Davis, who won six world titles in the 1980s, earned the nickname “Interesting.”
Alex Higgins and White played in beer-soaked men’s clubs and exhibitions to earn a living playing snooker. But the next crop of players found there was enough money to be won in tournaments.
Stephen Hendry was in that group. He broke through in the early 1990s, on his way to becoming one of the top players in history. Last week, he won £147,000 when he achieved a perfect score, a maximum 147-point break, in one frame of his quarter-final match against Murphy. The feat requires potting a specific sequence of 36 consecutive balls. A subdued fist-pump was all Hendry did to celebrate his ninth career maximum.
“It’s a brutal sport because you don’t have to do much wrong to lose,” John Higgins said. “Baseball, tennis, golf, you can hit back and rectify things right away. In snooker, if you play a bad shot, you could be sitting in your chair for an hour.”
Getting television audiences to do the same is proving far more difficult.
RSS