Valuable Life Lessons I Learned From Snooker!

Have you ever had a hobby that taught you a valuable life lesson?

I have had many moments in my life that have taught me valuable life lessons.

I personally believe that we can learn something from almost any situation, there is always a lesson there, we just have to look for it.

I have loved the game of Snooker for as long as I can remember, the game captured my imagination from a very tender age. When I started playing snooker, I couldn’t sink a ball even if my life depended on it, I wasn’t very good at all.

But due to the fact that I loved billiards, I continued to practice, I began to get better and better. I started chaining small breaks, 16 points, then 20 points, then 28 points, little by little I got better. The better I got, the more I practiced, and the more I practiced, the better I got. (Imagine huh!)

Now you will be forgiven for thinking that what I have written so far are the valuable life lessons I learned playing pool.

You would be right.

Perseverance and practice are character traits that you must possess in order to achieve all that you are capable of in this life.

You must decide to do something, and you must stick to it until it is completed.

When you start doing something, you are usually not very good at it, however, if you persevere, you will get better all the time.

The more you practice that, the easier it will be for you to do it and the better you will get at it.

Nevertheless.

The most valuable lesson I learned from pool came from watching it, not playing it.

It was April 28, 1985, I remember the date because it was my 17th birthday. Dennis Taylor and Steve Davis were at the world championship final at the Crucible Theater in Sheffield. The Final was the best of 35 billiard frames. Davis was ranked number one in the world at the time, he went into the final as the firm favourite. In the first session, Davis destroyed Taylor 7 frames to 0. Davis also won the first frame after the interval to make it 8-0.

Surprisingly, Taylor managed to dig deep and stage a comeback, and was down 9-7 late in the game on day one. They reached the final session tied 11-11.

Davis kept up the pressure and Taylor was playing catch-up once again, Davis leading 17-15 and was the first in 18 frames to win the title.

Taylor fought her way back to tie it at 17-17 and forced a decisive frame.

In the final frame, Davis led by 66 points to Taylor’s 44.

Taylor had to sink the last four balls to win the match. He laid down a difficult long-range brown, followed by a complicated blue and an even more complicated pink. This meant for the first time in history that the World Snooker Championship would be decided on the last ball, the black ball.

Taylor tried to double black into a middle pocket but missed and black walked away safely.

Davis played a fantastic safety shot next, leaving Taylor in a lot of trouble, Taylor tried to bend Black’s ball the full length of the table, missed and Black went to a relatively safe position.

An unfortunate double kiss on the black from Davis gave Taylor a chance, Taylor grabbed the shot and missed.

The commentator (Jim Meadowcroft) described it as “the biggest break of Dennis Taylor’s life.”

He had given Steve Davis a relatively easy pot with black, it was close range, but it was a cut in a blind pocket, it was the wanted shot that he made 100 times out of 100, but not this day. There were 18.5 million people in the UK watching at the time, and I don’t think you could have found 10 people who would have thought Steve Davis would fail that shot.

This time Dennis Taylor made no mistake, on his fourth shot at the black ball he pocketed it to become the 1985 World Snooker Champion. He had been behind from the first frame, the only time he was in front was when he pocketed the final black. of the match.

It was the biggest comeback in pool history and it taught me some very valuable life lessons.

“Never, never, never give up.”

“Never give up.”

“It’s not where you start, it’s where you end.”

I could go on, but I think you understand what I’m saying.

It’s always too early to give up, never give up.

I would like to leave you with a quote that summarizes the events of the 1985 World Snooker Championship.

“Some men abandon their desires when they have almost reached the goal; while others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, an effort more vigorous than ever.”