The 2009 World Snooker Championship (officially the 2009 Betfred.com World Snooker Championship) was a professional snooker tournament. It was held at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England, the 33rd consecutive year that the World Snooker Championship was staged at the venue. It took place between 18 April and 4 May 2009. The eighth and final ranking tournament of the 2008–09 snooker season, it was organised by the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association and sponsored for the first time by online betting shop Betfred. The total prize fund was £1,111,000, of which the winner received £250,000.
The qualifying rounds took place from 26 February to 4 March and from 8 to 10 March 2009 at the English Institute of Sport. The 16 qualifiers and the top 16 players from the snooker world rankings reached the tournament's main stage at the Crucible. Ronnie O'Sullivan was the defending champion, having defeated Ali Carter 18–8 in the 2008 final. He lost in the second round to Mark Allen.
John Higgins defeated Shaun Murphy 18–9 in the final to win his third world title and 20th ranking title. The final was refereed by Michaela Tabb, who became the first woman to officiate at a World Snooker Championship final. A total of 83 century breaks were compiled during the event's main stage, the highest being a 147 by Stephen Hendry in his quarter-final match against Murphy. It was the highest number of centuries compiled at the tournament's main stage until 2015. Another 69 century breaks were made during the qualifying rounds.
Background
The inaugural 1927 World Snooker Championship, then known as the Professional Championship of Snooker, took place at various venues in England between November 1926 and May 1927. Joe Davis won the final—held at Camkin's Hall in Birmingham from 9 to 12 May 1927—and went on to win the tournament 15 consecutive times before retiring undefeated after the 1946 edition (no tournaments were held from 1941 to 1945 because of World War II). The tournament went into abeyance after only two players contested the 1952 edition, due to a dispute between the Professional Billiards Players' Association (PBPA) and the Billiards Association and Control Council (BACC). The PBPA established an alternative tournament, the World Professional Championship, of which the six editions held between 1952 and 1957 are retroactively regarded as legitimate continuations of the World Snooker Championship. However, due to waning public interest in snooker during the era, that tournament was also discontinued, and the world title was uncontested between 1958 and 1963.
Then-professional player Rex Williams was instrumental in reviving the World Snooker Championship on a challenge basis in 1964. John Pulman, winner of the 1957 World Professional Championship, defended the world title across seven challenge matches between 1964 and 1968. The World Snooker Championship reverted to an annual knockout tournament for the 1969 edition, marking the beginning of the championship's "modern era". The 1977 edition was the first staged at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, where it has remained since. The most successful players in the modern era was Stephen Hendry, having won the title seven times. Hendry was also the tournament's youngest winner, having captured his first title at the 1990 event, aged . Ray Reardon became the oldest winner when he secured his sixth title at the 1978 event, aged .
Organised by the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association, the 2009 tournament was sponsored by online betting shop Betfred for the first time.
Prize fund The breakdown of prize money for this year is shown below:
Winner: £250,000 Runner-up: £125,000 Semi-final: £52,000 Quarter-final: £24,050 Last 16: £16,000 Last 32: £12,000 Last 48: £8,200
Last 64: £4,600 Stage one highest break: £1,000 Stage two highest break: £10,000 Stage one maximum break: £5,000 Stage two maximum break: £147,000 Total: £1,111,000
Summary First round
The first round was played between 18 and 23 April as the best of 19 held over two . The defending champion, Ronnie O'Sullivan, made breaks of 61, 140, 104, 73, 78, 94, 100 and 97 for a 105 victory against Stuart Bingham, although he rated his performance with a five out of ten. Six-time world champion Steve Davis qualified for the main stage of the World Championship for a record-extending 29th time, but he was defeated 210 by Neil Robertson, who notched a century break of 135 in the process. Clive Everton, writing for The Guardian, hinted that this could be Davis's last appearance at the Crucible. "To me it's not about going out in style. I've gone past that. I'm going down the wall hanging on by my fingernails," Davis said. In a duel between two former world champions, Stephen Hendry won 107 over Mark Williams, who had to have his repaired in the middle of the match. Graeme Dott, winner in 2006, disposed of Barry Hawkins with a 108 result.
There were four debutants at the Crucible in this edition—Rory McLeod, Martin Gould, Andrew Higginson and Ricky Walden—and they were all defeated in the first round. McLeod, who became the first-ever black player to play at the Crucible, lost 510 to Mark King. Gould defeated the 2000 and 2005 runner-up, Matthew Stevens, in the qualifiers to earn a place at the Crucible, but he could not make it past Mark Allen, who knocked him out in the first round with a 106 result. Allen, semi-finalist of the 2008 Bahrain Championship during the season, produced a of 88 in the last frame. As he went into his first-round match against Higginson, Shaun Murphy, the 2005 winner, was threatened by his wife to be presented with the divorce papers at the Crucible. Higginson took the lead at 65 at the beginning of the second session, but Murphy prevailed with a 108 result despite the personal issues. Walden, champion of both the invitational 2008 Six-red Snooker International and the ranking 2008 Shanghai Masters earlier in the season, lost 610 to Mark Selby, runner-up in 2007. Selby made three centuries in the second session to seal victory.
The runner-up in the previous edition, Ali Carter, had won his first ranking event earlier in the season, the 2009 Welsh Open. In his first-round match, he beat Gerard Greene 105. Greene, having reached the Crucible on four occasions, had never made it past the first round of the event. Stephen Maguire compiled breaks of 98, 96, 101, 122, 79 and 127 for a 105 defeat of Jamie Burnett. A few months earlier, at the 2008 UK Championship, the game between both players, which also went Maguire's way, was investigated after there were allegations of match fixing, but neither of the players was charged. Marco Fu constructed three centuries en route to a 104 victory over Joe Swail. John Higgins, world champion in 1998 and 2007, fell 24 behind Michael Holt during the first session, but he only conceded one more frame as he completed the comeback for a 105 win. Ding Junhui led Liang Wenbo 74, but Liang won four frames on the trot to put himself ahead. Ding then took three consecutive frames, featuring a century break, to clinch victory with a 108 result.
Only two out of the sixteen seeded players lost their first round matches. The 2002 world champion, Peter Ebdon, was defeated 510 by Nigel Bond, while Joe Perry lost 610 against Jamie Cope, who made good to advance into the second round of the World Championship for the first time in his career. Stephen Lee lost 410 against Ryan Day. In September 2013, he was found guilty of conspiring to lose that match, as well as six more. As part of a series of offenses, Lee received a 12-year ban and was ordered to pay £40,000 in costs. "There have been occasions when certain games have been questioned beforehand. You have heard there were certain betting patterns, but I heard nothing about any betting action at the time," Day said when he found out.
Second round
The second round of the event was played as the best of 25 frames, held over three sessions, between 23 and 27 April. Fourteen of the sixteen seeds reached the second round, along with two qualifiers, Bond and Cope. While the second round was being played, it was announced that the World Championship would continue to be played at the Crucible Theatre at least until 2014. Allen, who trailed O'Sullivan 79 at the beginning of the last session, went on to win 1311. O'Sullivan failed to defend the title, a feat last achieved by Hendry in 1996. "Mark [Allen] played brilliantly. He was better than me and if he keeps on playing as well he's got a great chance of winning the whole thing," O'Sullivan said. Day, who had yet to win a ranking event, progressed into the quarter-finals with a 135 win over Bond.
A break of 103, the third century of the match for him, put Cope 1210 up against Higgins, two frames ahead with only three left to play. Higgins made a 96 break as he halved the deficit and then forced a , which had to be stopped halfway through for some minutes as a spectator fell sick and was treated. Higgins sealed victory with an 80 break that began with a tricky shot to a . "I thought I'd got him," regretted Cope, who acknowledged he had had chances to win. Selby played Dott in a match which saw a controversial decision made by referee Alan Chamberlain. Dott had played a shot and was about to go , but stopped the with his fist, not allowing it to drop into the pocket and leaving it on the bed of the table. The referee called a foul and awarded four to Selby. Convinced that he now had the cue ball , as would have been the case after an in-off, Selby picked it up and placed it inside . However, the referee called a foul on him and awarded four points to Dott. Chamberlain's reasoning, as he voiced to the players, was that since the cue ball had never left the bed of the table, Selby should have played his next shot from where it had finished and not from the "D". Even though both players disputed the referee's call, it remained unchanged. Selby went on to win 1310.
Fu, who saw Murphy build a 71 lead against him in the first session, kicked off the second one with a 129 century break. Murphy, however, clinched victory with a 133 result and a . "I'm hitting the ball very well and I knew coming into the tournament that I'd put the work in and practised hard. I can play well enough to win this tournament for definite," Murphy claimed after the match. Scores were tied at the end of the second session of the duel between Hendry and Ding, who were playing each other at this stage of the tournament for the second year in a row. Hendry exploited an in-off by Ding to edge one ahead. In the following frame, which was the 1,000th Hendry won at the Crucible, he compiled a 140 break to equal O'Sullivan's highest break of the event thus far. He extended his lead to three in the following frame and, despite a 121 by Ding to reduce the difference, Hendry won 1310. "Vindication will only come with lifting the trophy, to me that's all I'm here for," Hendry claimed after the match. Seven times a winner of the tournament, his last victory had come a decade before.
Robertson won four of the last five frames of the second session on the final to build a two-frame cushion against Carter at 97. At the resumption, he doubled his lead with breaks of 89 and 59, the second one aided by a when playing a . Robertson went on to win the match 138. The first session of the match between Maguire and King, which was split at 44, featured a frame which was decided on the final black ball and lasted 75 minutes and 2 seconds, the longest in Crucible history. It was longer than the one played by Dott and Ebdon in the 2006 final, which held the record up to that point. Clive Everton, writing for The Guardian, stated that the session, which in total lasted three and a half hours, was "very slow by modern standards". Maguire prevailed in the end with a 136 defeat of King.
Quarter-finals