The 2003 World Snooker Championship (also referred to as the 2003 Embassy World Snooker Championship for the purposes of sponsorship) was a professional ranking snooker tournament that took place between 19 April and 5 May 2003 at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield.
Peter Ebdon was the defending champion, but he lost 12–13 to Paul Hunter in the quarter-finals and became another first-time champion who fell to the Crucible curse and could not defend his first World title.
Mark Williams won his second World title by defeating Ken Doherty 18–16 in the final. The tournament was sponsored by cigarette manufacturer Embassy.
Ronnie O'Sullivan's maximum break against Marco Fu in the first round was the fifth at the Crucible, and made O'Sullivan the first player to score two 147s at the venue. It was in fact the first 147 at the Crucible since O'Sullivan himself made one in 1997.
Stephen Hendry made a 132 break in his first round match against Gary Wilkinson, and became the first player to compile 100 century breaks at the Crucible.
During his second round match, Paul Hunter compiled the 750th century at the Crucible in frame four.
Mark Williams lost the opening two frames of his second-round match against Quinten Hann before winning 13 in a row – a record for a single match in modern times – to triumph 13–2.
In his quarter-final against John Higgins, Doherty won the first ten frames, before Higgins took the next seven. Doherty eventually won the match 13–8.
In the semi-finals, Ken Doherty trailed Paul Hunter 9–15, Hunter needing only two more frames for victory. Doherty won five in a row to reduce the deficit to one frame, but Hunter then took the 30th; however, Doherty won all three remaining frames to win the match 17–16 and reach the final.
Doherty produced a similar comeback in the final against Mark Williams, where he fell 2–10 behind before taking nine of the next ten frames to level at 11–11. He would also level the match at 12–12, 13–13, 14–14 and 16–16, before eventually losing the next two frames and the match.
Doherty played a total of 132 frames, a modern-day record at the World Championship.
Williams' victory in the final made him only the 3rd player in history to hold all three of snooker's Triple Crown events simultaneously, having also won the UK Championship and Masters tournaments earlier in the season.
The breakdown of prize money for this year is shown below:
Winner: £270,000
Runner-up: £158,000
Semi-final: £79,000
Quarter-final: £39,500
Last 16: £22,000
Last 32: £15,000
Highest break: £22,000
Maximum break: £147,000
Total: £1,682,900
Main 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 53 centuries in this year's championship. The highest break of the tournament was 147 made by Ronnie O'Sullivan.
