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2007 World Snooker Championship

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Dates
  
21 April–7 May 2007

City
  
Sheffield

Organisation(s)
  
WPBSA

Venue
  
Crucible Theatre

Country
  
England

Format
  
Ranking event

The 2007 World Snooker Championship (also referred to as the 2007 888.com World Snooker Championship for the purposes of sponsorship) was a professional ranking snooker tournament. The event began on 21 April and ran until 7 May 2007 (with the final continuing into the early hours of 8 May) at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England.

Contents

Graeme Dott was the defending champion, but lost in the first round 7–10 to Ian McCulloch and became another World Champion who fell to the Crucible curse and could not defend his first World title.

John Higgins won his second World title by defeating qualifier Mark Selby 18–13 in the final. The tournament was sponsored by online casino 888.com.

Tournament summary

  • Before the tournament began Ronnie O'Sullivan alleged that the WPBSA draw had been fixed, after having been drawn in the first round against Ding Junhui, considered by bookmakers to be among the favourites for the title, and noting that he had drawn European Open and UK Champion, Stephen Maguire, in both 2004 and 2005. O'Sullivan later withdrew the accusation, and made no formal complaint to the WPBSA, who maintain that the draw was genuine.
  • In the first round battle of the champions, John Parrott beat Steve Davis by 10 frames to 9.
  • Shaun Murphy came back from 7–12 down to win his quarter-final match against Matthew Stevens, a feat never before accomplished in a best of 25 frame match.
  • During his semi-final match, John Higgins compiled the Crucible's 1,000th century break in frame 29.
  • The final had the latest finish in history, with the conclusion of the 31st and final frame coming at 00:54 am BST, just two minutes later than in 2006.
  • John Higgins' second title came nine years after his first, the longest gap between wins since his namesake Alex Higgins. It is the longest gap between wins at the Crucible.
  • This year's tournament saw the debut of future world number one Judd Trump.

    • Prize fund

    The breakdown of prize money for this year is shown below:

    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). The first round draw was done by presenters Bill Turnbull and Sian Williams of BBC Breakfast on 19 March and it was announced on Breakfast at 7.30 am BST the next day.

    Preliminary qualifying

    The preliminary qualifying rounds for the tournament took place in Pontin's Prestatyn, Wales.

    Round 1

    Round 2

    Qualifying

    Qualifying for the 2007 World Snooker Championship, was held between 23 February to 2 March 2007 at Pontin's, Prestatyn, Wales. The final qualifying round took place at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield between the 12–15 March 2007.

    Round 1

    Rounds 2–5

    Televised stage centuries

    There were 68 centuries scored in the televised stage of the 2007 championship, which was joint equal highest in the history of the tournament (with the tournament held in 2002) until 2009.

    References

    2007 World Snooker Championship Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA