From Pot Black to Ronnie O’Sullivan: Why Snooker Hooked Me and Never Quite Let Go

Direct answer: Snooker got its hooks into a generation through short, dramatic television like Pot Black, then kept people watching through bigger personalities, bigger rivalries, and wildly different playing styles. For me, that journey runs from Alex Higgins bringing danger and flair, through the machine-like dominance of Steve Davis and Stephen Hendry, to Ronnie O’Sullivan becoming the most gifted all-round player the game has produced.

I think that is the simplest way to explain my relationship with snooker. It started as a television fascination, turned into a proper obsession in the late seventies and eighties, then became a long-running argument in my own head about what makes the sport most watchable. Is it perfection? Is it consistency? Or is it the slight whiff of disaster that hangs over a risky shot when a genius decides to have a go anyway?

• What first pulled me in: Pot Black and the simple drama of one-frame snooker on the BBC
• Who lit the fuse: Alex Higgins, with all the spin, swagger, and chaos that came with him
• What changed the sport: Steve Davis and Stephen Hendry turned winning into a ruthless science
• Why I still watch: Ronnie O’Sullivan brings back the feeling that something ridiculous might happen at any moment

The point here is not that one era was objectively better than another. It is that each period gave the game a different flavour. Some were full of characters. Some were full of execution. Some were unbelievable to admire, even if they were not always brilliant to watch as entertainment. So there you go.

How Pot Black Became the Gateway Drug for Snooker

I think the first snooker I ever watched would have been Pot Black, and that mattered because it made the game dead easy to get into. It was not a marathon. It was not a long tactical arm wrestle spread over hours. It was one frame, half an hour, proper television, and that gave the whole thing a sense of urgency.

For loads of us, that was the introduction. You would sit there, maybe not knowing all the finer points of safety play or break-building, but you understood enough. Pot this. Miss that. Leave him in trouble. Steal the frame. The format did the hard work for the viewer. It stripped snooker down to its bones and made it dramatic before you even realised you were learning the game.

And once the BBC started giving snooker more airtime, it stopped being this odd little curiosity and became part of the rhythm of the year. You got to know the table, the sounds, the commentators, the nicknames, and the little rituals. As a child, that stuff gets under your skin. You do not just watch players. You start collecting them in your head like characters in a long-running drama.

Why Alex Higgins Felt Like the First Proper Rock Star of Snooker

I do not think I will be alone in saying that nobody lit the game up in the late seventies and early eighties like Alex Higgins. He was not tidy. He was not safe. He was not predictable. He was quite clearly a man with demons, and that came with all sorts of trouble, but at the table he was magnetic.

He played the game like he was trying to bend it to his will. The cue ball seemed to spin, swerve, screw back, and recover from positions other players would never have chosen in the first place. You see modern players like Judd Trump play with outrageous side and recovery now, and brilliantly so, but Higgins felt like one of the first players who made that sort of imagination look central to the performance rather than a little flourish on top.

That was the magic. Higgins made snooker feel dangerous. You never got the sense he was just following a pattern. He looked as though he was inventing the answer while everybody else was still reading the question. Jimmy White would carry that spirit into the eighties as well. Those two, in different ways, were the showmen. They made the sport feel less like a parlour game and more like theatre with a hangover.

Alex Higgins mattered because he turned technical excellence into entertainment. He did not just pot balls. He made you lean forward.

Why flair mattered so much to viewers

Snooker needs more than ability. It needs jeopardy. The reason Higgins worked on television was that every frame felt as though it might go a bit bonkers. He might miss. He might recover. He might take on a shot nobody sensible should play. That uncertainty was half the fun.

What the Eighties Had That Later Eras Sometimes Lost

The eighties were packed with faces you remembered. Not just because they won, but because they had shape and personality. Cliff Thorburn was nicknamed The Grinder for a reason. He could slow a match down, squeeze it, drag the life out of it, and still get the job done. Ray Reardon, by contrast, always felt to me like a player of immense authority and presence, someone who brought menace and class without becoming dull. Dennis Taylor, Willie Thorne, Kirk Stevens, John Virgo, Neil Foulds, Tony Meo, Tony Drago, Tony Knowles, Doug Mountjoy, David Taylor — these were not just surnames on a draw. They were characters.

That is one of the biggest changes in the sport over time. Back then, you felt as though you knew the players. You knew the glasses. The hair. The swagger. The tension. The smiles. The little habits. It made snooker easy to follow because the match never felt detached from the people playing it.

For me, one of the biggest sporting moments of my lifetime remains the 1982 World Championship final when Alex Higgins won again. It felt emotional because he was not just a champion. He was the player people had willed into greatness because they had seen the brilliance and the mess all mixed together. Seeing him in tears with his family there gave the whole thing real human weight. It was bigger than a result.

Why the 1985 final still matters to snooker history

The Dennis Taylor win over Steve Davis in 1985 on the final black has become part of British sporting folklore because it captured everything snooker can do at its best. Long format. Twists. Nerves. Momentum swings. Personal drama. You could show someone that match as an explanation of why the sport works on television and not need to say much else.

That era also had results that felt gloriously human. Joe Johnson winning in 1986, for example, was the sort of story that reminded you the sport had room for surprise. The danger with total dominance is that it squeezes surprise out of the room. The eighties still had enough disorder to keep things lively.

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How Steve Davis Made Snooker Better and, at Times, Harder to Love

I have to be fair here. Steve Davis took the game to a level that had not really been seen before. He was relentless. Clinical. Properly serious about improvement. He reduced risk, punished mistakes, and made winning look methodical. The game became more professional because of players like him, and that matters.

But as a fan who wanted sparks flying off the table, he could be an archenemy. Not because he was dull as a person, but because he was so much better than so many of his peers that matches could feel inevitable. The whole point of watching snooker, at least for me, is that little tremor in the stomach when somebody might miss and throw the door open. Davis did not leave many doors open.

He did not need to play like Higgins. He did not need to chase miracle shots. He just needed to be right more often than everyone else. And in a sport built on precision, being right more often is basically a licence to rule the decade.

That is why the eighties can be remembered in two ways at once. On one hand, they were full of huge television moments and colourful players. On the other, they were the years when snooker started becoming brutally efficient. Davis was the clearest sign that the old romance was being challenged by something colder and more repeatable.

Why Stephen Hendry Turned the Nineties Into a Production Line

When the nineties arrived, I do not think many of us were truly ready for Stephen Hendry. He looked young, fresh-faced, calm, and utterly ruthless. And once he got going, the sport changed again. If Davis had professionalised snooker, Hendry weaponised aggression within that professionalism. He did not just wait for openings. He smashed the game open and cleared the table before anyone could settle.

The class of 1992 gave the decade another shape, of course. Ronnie O’Sullivan, John Higgins, and Mark Williams were all arriving, and in time those three would become central to any serious conversation about the best players ever to pick up a cue. But in the nineties, they were emerging into Hendry’s world. He was the centre of gravity. Everyone else orbited him.

What Happened to Snooker in the 2000s When the Old Order Started to Shift

By the 2000s, my own viewing had changed a bit. I was not inhaling every event in the way I had as a kid. I would dip into the big tournaments and keep an eye on the major storylines. Jimmy White had gone off the boil. Hendry was no longer the machine he had been. There was more variety in the winners, and that made the sport less predictable again, even if it did not always feel as culturally massive as it had in the BBC heyday.

Ken Doherty’s 1997 world title felt like one of those moments that reminded you history does not always run in a straight line. The same goes for other champions who broke through in periods that looked settled from a distance. Snooker had become less of a two-man or one-man show and more of a crowded field, which was healthier in one sense, but it also meant the sport needed new personalities to anchor people emotionally.

That is really where Ronnie begins to matter in a different way. Not just as a wonderful player, but as the figure who restored unpredictability at the very top of the game. He had genius, but he also had volatility. He could produce things nobody else could imagine, then look as though he had gone off the whole enterprise entirely. That made him compelling in exactly the way flawless efficiency never quite can be.

Why Ronnie O’Sullivan Feels Like the Greatest and the Most Watchable

Ronnie O’Sullivan is, for me, the best player ever to pick up a cue. That is not a hot take now. It is basically the broad conclusion of watching him for decades and seeing the sheer range of what he can do. He is a great potter, a great break-builder, a superb safety player, a brilliant escape artist from snookers, and one of the few players who can make the impossible shot seem both hilarious and sensible at the same time.

What separates him from Hendry in feel, even if not always in concentrated dominance, is that Ronnie still carries a bit of danger around with him. There are demons there. There have always been demons there. He can be transcendent and awkward, generous and irritable, all in the same spell. That gives his greatness texture. It feels human. Alex Higgins had that sort of instability too, though expressed very differently and in a different era.

Official records have kept moving in Ronnie’s favour. WPBSA’s ranking winners list notes that he moved beyond Hendry’s 36 ranking titles and reached 41 as of 2025, which tells its own story about longevity as well as brilliance. He has not had a single decade of total monopoly in quite the way Hendry did, but he has stayed near the top for an absurd length of time and kept reinventing how that greatness looks. The official ranking winners record shows just how far he has pushed that benchmark.

And that is what makes him box office. Even when you know he is one of the best ever, you still feel the old thrill. He might produce a clearance from nowhere. He might rattle in a long red that leaves him perfect on the black. He might decide to attack when every sane person watching would roll up behind the brown. It is not just greatness. It is watchable greatness.

Why Ronnie never felt as inevitable as Hendry

Hendry dominated more completely across a set period. Ronnie has dazzled more continuously across a much longer one. That is why the argument is interesting. If you want the cleanest, most overwhelming decade, Hendry has the case. If you want the most gifted all-round player, the one who can do everything and still make it feel alive, I do not think anyone comes close to Ronnie.

Who Replaces Ronnie When the Last Proper Box Office Player Finally Goes

That is the worry now, really. As Ronnie moves toward the end of his professional career, you start asking who carries the emotional weight of the sport next. Judd Trump is probably the nearest thing to a successor in pure flair because he has outrageous talent and the nerve to trust it. Neil Robertson can be cracking to watch when he gets flowing. Luca Brecel, when he is on, can play like he has forgotten normal shot selection exists. And the rise of Chinese players has changed the shape of the game in a massive way.

Zhao Xintong, in particular, has shown the sort of attacking freedom that makes people stop what they are doing and watch. The standard coming through from China is superb and will keep the game healthy. But this is where my old-fan bias probably kicks in. Being brilliant is not quite the same as being a character. The older generations often seemed to carry whole off-table identities with them into the arena. The modern player, understandably, is more focused, fitter, better prepared, and less likely to arrive trailing chaos behind him.

That is better for performance and probably better for their actual lives, to be fair. But it does change the atmosphere. A machine built for perfect execution is impressive. It is just not always as entertaining as somebody who looks as though he might either produce genius or make a total mess of it in the next five minutes.

• What modern snooker has in abundance: technical excellence, fitness, preparation, and deeper strength in the field
• What it can still struggle to produce: larger-than-life personalities viewers feel they know
• What the sport needs next: players who combine elite scoring with a recognisable presence and story

My Bottom Line on the Best Eras, the Best Players, and the Best Kind of Snooker

If I boil it all down, the flame that started the snooker fire for me was Alex Higgins. He made the game feel dangerous, glamorous, scruffy, emotional, and alive all at once. Steve Davis and Stephen Hendry then showed what happens when somebody becomes so much better than everybody else that whole tournaments begin to feel pre-written. That sort of excellence deserves respect, even when it robs the neutral viewer of a bit of suspense.

Then came the longer, messier modern age, where the field broadened and the sport searched for new central figures. Out of that, Ronnie O’Sullivan emerged as the player who best combines all the things I love about snooker. He has the genius, the bravery, the speed, the touch, the imagination, and just enough unpredictability to keep the whole thing from going stale.

So my conclusion is fairly straightforward. Ronnie is the best all-round player I have ever seen. Hendry had the most crushing period of domination. Davis made the sport professional in a new way. Higgins made me care in the first place. And if snooker wants to keep pulling in the next generation in the same way Pot Black once did, it needs not just potting machines, but personalities people want to spend time with.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why did Pot Black matter so much to snooker fans?

Because it gave people a simple way into the sport. One frame in a short television slot made snooker feel dramatic and accessible, even if you knew very little about the deeper tactics.

Why was Alex Higgins such a big deal?

He brought flair, risk, emotion, and imagination to the table. Higgins made snooker feel unpredictable, and that made him unforgettable to viewers.

Was Steve Davis bad for entertainment?

No. He made the sport better by raising standards, but his consistency could make matches feel more predictable, which is not always what casual viewers want.

Why did Stephen Hendry dominate the nineties so heavily?

Because he combined ruthless scoring with aggressive matchplay and extraordinary consistency. Once he got chances, he usually punished them far more heavily than everyone else.

Why is Ronnie O’Sullivan still the most watchable player for many fans?

Because he pairs elite all-round ability with imagination and unpredictability. He can control a match like a great champion, but he can also play shots that make you stop and grin.

By Ade McFade, a commercial photographer based in Leeds, Yorkshire, with over 14 years shooting for businesses, brands, and editorial clients across the region.