The 1997 World Snooker Championship (akso referred to as the 1997 Embassy World Snooker Championship for the purposes of sponsorship) was a professional ranking snooker tournament that took place between 19 April – 5 May 1997 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England.
Ken Doherty won his first World title by defeating defending champion Stephen Hendry 18–12 in the final. Doherty also became the first snooker player to win the World Championship at junior, amateur and professional level. The tournament was sponsored by cigarette manufacturer Embassy.
The semi-final matches were best of 33 for the first time, having previously been best of 31.Ronnie O'Sullivan made the quickest maximum break in history with a time of 5 minutes and 20 seconds, and the fourth in the history of the tournament.Terry Griffiths' first round encounter against Mark Williams was his last ever professional match.Stephen Hendry's five-year run as World Champion came to an end after losing to Ken Doherty 12–18. It was Hendry's first defeat at the World Championship since 1991, spanning 29 matches, a Crucible record.Doherty became only the second player from outside the United Kingdom to win the world title in the modern era, following Cliff Thorburn in 1980.Alan Chamberlain would referee his first and only World Championship final. He was the first referee since Jim Thorpe in 1984 to officiate a debut final. All finals up to this year were officiated by either John Williams, Len Ganley or John Street. The next four years would also have referees debuting the final: Lawrie Annandale in 1998, Colin Brinded in 1999, John Newton in 2000 and Eirian Williams in 2001, before John Williams did his 10th final in 2002.The breakdown of prize money for this year is shown below:
Winner: £210,000Runner-up: £126,000Semi-finalist: £63,000Quarter-finalist: £31,500Last 16: £16,800Last 32: £9,450Highest break: £18,000Maximum break: £147,000Total £1,260,000Main draw
Shown below are the results for each round. The numbers in parentheses beside some of the players are their seeding ranks (each championship has 16 seeds and 16 qualifiers).
There were 39 century breaks in this year's championship.
