The 1980 World Snooker Championship (also known as the 1980 Embassy World Snooker Championship for the purposes of sponsorship) was a professional ranking snooker tournament that took place between 22 April and 5 May 1980 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England.
Cliff Thorburn won in the final 18–16 against Alex Higgins. The tournament was sponsored by cigarette manufacturer Embassy.
Tony Meo, Cliff Wilson and Ray Edmonds made their Crucible debuts. However, they lost in the first round 9–10 against Alex Higgins, 6–10 against Doug Mountjoy and 5–10 David Taylor respectively. John Pulman made his last appearance at the World Championship, losing 5–10 against Canadian Jim Wych.
The championship extended the players who played the Crucible from 16 to 24 with the top eight players going automatically in to round 2.
To accommodate these eight extra matches, the frames in each match were also revamped. The first round went to 19 frames, the second and quarter-finals to 25, the semi-finals to 31 and the final to 35 frames. The format still continues today except for the semi-final, which became a 33-frame match in 1997.
The coverage of the final was interrupted by coverage of the Iranian Embassy siege, as the BBC took the snooker off the air to bring live coverage of the SAS storming the Iranian Embassy in London.
John Street refereed the final.
The breakdown of prize money for this year is shown below:
Winner: £15,000
Runner-up: £8,000
Semi-final: £4,000
Quarter-final: £2,000
Last 16: £1,500
Last 32: £750
Highest break: £1,000
Maximum break: £10,000
Total: £60,000
Main draw
Numbers in (parentheses) indicate seedings.
Source:
There were 11 century breaks at the championship. Kirk Stevens and Steve Davis shared the high break prize when they both made a 136 break. It was the first time the highest break went to two players. There was also a £5,000 bonus for compiling a higher break than the championship record of 142.
136, 116 Steve Davis
136 Kirk Stevens
123, 104 Doug Mountjoy
122 Alex Higgins
119, 114 Cliff Thorburn
108 John Spencer
106 Fred Davis
101 Bill Werbeniuk
