By Elliott West
Introduction
Held at the Civic Centre, Oldham between 10-13 January, 1982, this was a non-ranking event and had a winning prize of £5,000. Steve Davis stole the show in this tournament after he successfully achieved the first televised 147 break in his quarter-final match with John Spencer. This maximum break were added to with breaks of 105 and 101 throughout the event by Steve. The irony being that although he played exceptionally well throughout, he didn’t take the title. Instead he was pipped to the post by Terry Griffiths, who defeated him in the final 9-8.
The Tournament
Quarter-Finals
Terry Griffiths beat Cliff Thorburn 5-1
Alex Higgins beat Dennis Taylor 5-1
Ray Reardon beat David Taylor 5-1
Steve Davis beat John Spencer 5-2
None of the quarter-finals produced a close finish. Griffiths, snowbound at his Llanelli home, was helicoptered at Lada’s expense from the field next to his home to Oldham Athletic’s pitch in time to dispose comfortably of Thorburn; Higgins won by the same margin against Dennis Taylor 5-1, Taylor’s loss of a black ball fifth frame costing him the chance to stay with a glimmer of a chance at 2-3; and Reardon played with all the authority of his greatest years to crush David Taylor 5-1.
This left Davis’s 5-2 win over Spencer – 147 break and all – as the closest quarter-final.
“I travelled up to Oldham the night before but I woke up at 5 o’clock Monday morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. I had to go to Harrogate to the toy fair in the afternoon but I had time to hit a few balls on the match table before the match.
“I felt tired and not really thinking as clearly about the game as I would like to but you can never tell at all at this game,” he said.
“One of the nice things about making the 147 was that people come up to me and said they’d be waiting all their lives to see a maximum. There again, Ivan Mauger, the Speedway rider, came along and saw a maximum the first time he’d ever seen live snooker in his life!
“It’s quite nice too that a pal of mine had £5 on at 100-1 that there’d be a maximum on television in the next eight months”.
Semi-Finals
Griffiths beat Higgins 5-1
Griffiths and Higgins had played some great matches but this was not one of them.
Though reassured by being given a clean bill of health from the comprehensive hospital tests which anxiety over weight loss and various ailments had promoted him to undertake the previous month, Higgins gave little sign that he had recaptured his confidence or his fluency save in a break of 55 which accounted for the only frame he won.
Griffiths played solidly, albeit rather inhibitedly, as if over anxious not to slip up once he had realised that Higgins was struggling for form.
Davis beat Reardon 5-4
Davis’s maximum rebounded on him to the extent that he had, in his conscientious, to bestir himself by mid morning to be presented with the special jackpot prize of the £3,365 Lada saloon on which, it seems, his younger brother will now learn to drive.
“I’d have slept until the afternoon but for that,” he said.
Davis led 2-0 but missed a straightish brown, half the length of the table and a cut pink, another shot he would rarely miss, when either ball would have given him 3-0.
Reardon was not producing the form he had shown in his previous match but once he won the frame and taken the next with a break of 68 it was clear that he was in with a wonderful chance.
The fifth frame saw both players fail to take advantage of three good chances each before Davis went 3-2 up with a break of 71.
Leading 4-2, Davis missed the black from its spot, when that ball and the penultimate red would have taken him past the post, to allow Reardon his opportunity for a 30 clearance to win on the black.
At 4-3, Davis missed an even easier chance to clinch the match, failing at the brown, when this was frame ball, and when Reardon recovered to claim his second consecutive black ball success to reach 4-4 the former champion looked favourite.
One chance went down on either side in the decider before Davis, desperately tired as he was, lifted himself to produce an immaculate break of 105 to clinch his place in the final.
The Final
Griffiths beat Davis 9-8
Davis looked – and said he felt – much better that he had the previous day and there was certainly nothing wrong with the 96 clearance with which he won the opening frame but the occasional surprising errors which started to creep in soon made it clear that he had not recaptured his deadliest consistently.
Griffiths led 2-1, fell behind 2-3, won the last two frames of the afternoon to lead 4-3 at the interval.
Throughout the session, Griffiths cued straight and true and brought off some important long pots, in particular one that initiated a break of 52 in the last frame before the interval. Davis had a chance to snatch victory with a clearance but left the cue-ball in the jaws of the middle pocket and missed the yellow from its spot.
The promoters, Barwell Sports, nervous of a repetition of Davis’s 9-0 whitewash of Dennis Taylor in the final of the Jameson International, which provided only one frame of live action in the final session, and his 16-3 Coral United Kingdom final victory over Griffiths, which provided none at all, prudently split the final seven and ten between afternoon and evening rather than the conventional eight and nine, a step which, on the Sods Law principle, almost backfired as the gripping evening session did not finish to 12.08, only seven minutes before ITV, less flexible than the BBC in their scheduling, was due to go off the air.
For the first part of the evening, Griffiths commanded the stage. A long yellow, followed by the green, took him home in the first frame of the evening after he had seized the initiative with a break of 39 though he could have lived to regret neglecting to end the break by leaving the snooker which was easily available.
A break of 86 took him to 6-3 but his chance of 7-3 seemed to have passed him by when, 29 in front, he did cue quite as smoothly as he usually did at the last red into a blind pocket and gave Davis his chance for a clearance.
It was a clearance, though, which Davis could not complete. The final black, not easy, but the sort of shot of which he normally disposed of eluded him and Griffiths went to 7-3.
Leading 8-3 at the mid-session interval, Griffiths looked a certainty and the press corps began to write their stories but, as it turned out, the story had still to enter its most interesting phase.
“I’m still enjoying it”, Davis said, perhaps surprisingly, at the mid-session interval and it was clear that he was enjoying it even more when he won the first couple of frames on the resumption, the latter with a break of 101, to put a modicum of pressure on his opponent.
Griffiths, needing a clearance to win the twelfth frame for the match, had suffered an untimely kick on the pink after taking the last red and, at 8-5, he had to put up with Davis fluking a frame ball green as he missed by the proverbial mile into the intended pocket. At 8-6 it was anybody’s match.
Griffiths led by 34 points in the fifteenth frame but Davis again denied him before a 132-0 whitewash levelled the match at 8-8.
In the decider, Griffiths was first in with 30 but missed an early red with the rest only for Davis, a few shots later, to do likewise.
The Welshman improved his 11 point point advantage at this stage to one of 44 by means of a 33 break and, with his opponent needing a snooker with only two reds remaining, needed only to make sure of an eminently pottable red along the top cushion to leave Davis needing three snookers.
Instead, he attempted position for the pink and this needless division of concentration gave the world champion a glimmer of hope.
Davis potted the last two reds with high value colours, extracted six in penalty points from an awkward snooker and Griffiths, it seemed, had missed his chance.
Davis potted the yellow, missed the green, almost straight into a pocket, and Griffiths twice wobbled, what would, £100 to a dog biscuit, have proved the winning green.
The colours to the blue went to Davis; Griffiths wobbled the pink to match; and Davis took the pink, a wonderful long pot attempted almost in desperation because all the safety alternatives looked fraught with difficulty.
“I never thought I could lose until Steve potted that pink,” said Griffiths. “The black was very difficult but after that pink I thought I was bound to get it”.
The position of the black, only just out from the side cushion with the cue-ball some nine feet away, would have deterred most players from an attempt at the pot. Again, however, the safety shot was problematic and the pot, difficult as it was, was well on the cards for a player of Davis’s quality.
He boggled it in the jaws at 100 m.p.h, leaving the cue-ball tight on the side cushion as the black rebounded to the opposite side of the table.
“I’d been missing that shot – tight on the cushion and a three-quarter ball contact – in practice all week,” said Griffiths.
But it was alright on the night. Two and three-quarter hours after he had led 8-3, Griffiths sank the final black for victory.
“Steve showed tremendous courage, typical of a world champion”, said Griffiths generously. “On top of that when I lost a frame or two my mind started to go a bit, it was like climbing Everest thirty times”.
Summary
Terry Griffiths’ victory in this tournament was largely overshadowed by the glorious 147 break earlier in the event. Had not this sporting occurrence happened, then maybe the Lada Classic would less remembered. Terry won his final on merit and had everyone on the edge of the seats as they waited to see who would cross the line first. A former postman whose performance was first class and delivery, superb.
