{| class="wikitable" border=1 width=370px align="right" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin-left: .5em; border-collapse: collapse; margin-top: .4em;font-size: 90%;"

|+Statistics prior to the final:

|-

! scope="col" |Statistic

! scope="col" |Steve Davis

! scope="col" |Dennis Taylor

|-

! scope="row" |

|align="center"|center|alt=photo|x200px Pictured in 2010

|align="center"|center|alt=photo|x200px Pictured in 2004

|- style="text-align:center;"

! scope="row" |Nationality

| English

| Northern Irish

|- style="text-align:center;"

! scope="row" |Best Finish

|Winner (1981, 1983 and 1984)

|Runner-up (1979)

|- style="text-align:center;"

! scope="row" |World ranking

| 1

| 11

|-

! scope="row" |Referee

|style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"| John Williams

|}

The 1985 World Snooker Championship final, also known as the black-ball final, was played on the weekend of 1985 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. The final of the 1985 World Snooker Championship was between defending world champion Steve Davis and 1979 runner-up Dennis Taylor. It was Davis's fourth appearance in a final and Taylor's second. The best-of-35- match was split into four . Davis won every frame in the first session to lead 7–0 and extended his lead to 9–1 in the second session but led 9–7 overnight and 13–11 after the third sessions. Until the match was over, Taylor was never ahead in frames but had tied the contest three times at 11–11, 15–15 and 17–17. The culminated in a number of shots on the final . After both players had failed to it several times, Taylor potted the black to win his only world championship. Media outlets reported this as a major shock: Davis had been widely predicted to win the match, having lifted three of the previous four world championship titles.

The final took place during the eighth year of the BBC's daily coverage of the championship and reached a climax in the early hours of Monday 29 April. It was viewed by 18.5 million people in the United Kingdom, which remains a record viewing figure for BBC2, and is still the record for a post-midnight audience for any British television channel. The total match time of 14 hours and 50 minutes is the longest ever recorded for a best-of-35-frames match. It is the only final at this venue to contain no century breaks.

The final is one of the most famous matches in snooker history and part of the reason for the surge in the sport's popularity in the 1980s and 1990s. Two hour-long BBC documentaries, When Snooker Ruled the World from 2002 and Davis v Taylor: The '85 Black Ball Final made in 2010, commemorated the event. The final frame was released in full on home video as "The Greatest Snooker Final of All Time". The post-match single-word responses to David Vine from Davis would later be used as a basis for a recurring caricature of him in the television show Spitting Image.

Background

The World Snooker Championship is a professional snooker tournament first held in 1927 and becoming an annual event in 1969. The 1985 World Snooker Championship final was the culmination of the last world ranking event of the 1984–85 snooker season. The tournament featured a 32-participant main draw, with 16 seeded players and 16 players from a pre-tournament qualification competition. Taylor played Cliff Thorburn in the quarter-finals, in a match full of slow play. Davis was competing in his fourth world championship final, having reached the final and won in 1981, 1983 and 1984.

Taylor started the 1985 final with a of 50 but lost that frame as Davis gained a firm advantage by his opponent in the first session. Davis also won the first of the second session to lead 8–0. This left Davis a thin cut shot into the top-left corner. He over-cut the black, missed the shot and left the black in a reasonably-straightforward pottable position into the same pocket. Taylor made his way to the table and potted the black to win the match. In a post-match interview with David Vine, Davis commented that the loss was "all there in black and white", His win at the world championship he also dedicated to his mother's life. On his return to Northern Ireland, Taylor received a victory parade in a Land Rover across his home town of Coalisland in front of 10,000 people.

References

  • 1985 World Snooker Championship – Steve Davis v Dennis Taylor Black Ball Final on YouTube (World Snooker Tour edit, 44 minutes)
  • The '85 Black Ball Final on BBC iPlayer