By Elliott West
Introduction
The brainchild of Roger Lee, the 1985 Kit Kat Break for World Champions was a one off tournament consisting of all the previous snooker World Champions, eight players who were still on the tour and John Pulman who was at this point retired. Held at the East Midlands Conference Centre in Nottingham, between the 17th to the 20th December, 1985 and brought together the length and breadth of snooker history from Fred Davis to Dennis Taylor. A non-televised event, the aim of this event was to plug the void of when snooker wasn’t televised and to bring back some nostalgia to snooker fans in the form of an early Christmas present.
With a total prize fund of £30,000 with £10,000 going to the winner, a substantial prize pot in terms of a non-televised event. Very highly promoted, the event was always going to be prone to criticism but the only complaint to come out of this, was that the location was not the accessible to the Nottingham public. The East Midlands Conference had a 500 seat capacity and was widely regarded as being high quality but like any snooker event, audience numbers were low in the early rounds of the tournament. All in all the tournament was highly successful and merited talk for a junior event with same sponsor and format.
The Tournament
Quarter-Finals (Best of 9 frames)
Dennis Taylor v Fred Davis 6-0
After taking the opening frame on the black, the then World Champion, Dennis Taylor took the second frame with a break of 71, aided by a fluked red. Further breaks of 56 and 80 helped Taylor lead 4-0 before he completed his whitewash of the oldest surviving World Champion with breaks of 34 and 35 in the next.
Terry Griffiths v Ray Reardon 5-2
Reardon’s dreadful record in singles play that season continued. Trailing 0-2, he did pull up to one behind at 2-3 before Griffiths took control of the match again to run out a 5-2 winner.
Steve Davis v John Spencer 5-2
Dropping the first frame, Davis was never threatened.
Alex Higgins v Cliff Thorburn 5-4
Thorburn recovered from 1-4 to lead by 24 points on the green in the decider before Higgins took the match on the black. This was after the Canadian had gone in-off on the green.
Semi-Finals (Best of 11 frames)
Dennis Taylor v Terry Griffiths 6-4
Despite the rigours of a hectic few months of off and on the table commitments, Taylor finished the stronger in this tough and well contested match. Dennis won two further comfortable frames for victory from 4-4.
Steve Davis v Alex Higgins 6-1
Higgins was not in the ideal frame of mind to produce his best after a warrant for his arrest had been issued in the morning. This followed his non-appearance for a court summons in connection with a domestic fracas at his house a few months previously. It transpired that the summons had been sent to the wrong address and the warrant was withdrawn.
Davis played with uncharacteristic abandon from the outset and once or twice his shot choice verged on the outrageous. He was intent on winning the match quickly and he played well enough to get away with this unusual policy with something to spare.
The Final (Best of 17 frames)
Dennis Taylor v Steve Davis 9-5
Taylor scored his second win over Davis in their three finals that season but the session possessed a mere fraction of the tension seen in Davis’s 10-9 win in the 1985 Rothman’s Grand Prix or Taylor’s inspired 9-5 victory in the 1985 Canadian Masters. Davis played many shots with only a couple of preliminary addresses of the cue-ball and his choice of shot was more appropriate to an exhibition rather than a tournament final.
It wasn’t he wanted to lose but there did appear to be limits to the effort he was prepared to invest to give himself the best chance of winning. Such an approach was at times inevitable through the accumulated strain of several months tough match play.
Taylor, who of course had the same problem ,appeared jaded but applied himself much more determinedly and on that account deserved to win. Davis led 3-0 and 4-1 but a casual failure at the black from the spot early in the sixth frame, changed the course of the contest. With the last two frames of the afternoon and the first five on the resumption, Taylor led 8-4.
There were two black ball frames in this sequence, the second and third frames of the evening. The former gave Taylor a 5-4 lead after he had needed a snooker with only pink and black remaining.
There was comparatively little safety play and the frames were completed at a sharp rate. Of the afternoon’s seven, the largest was of eighteen minutes. Among the evening’s seven, the penultimate frame was of thirty-three minutes and provided Davis with his only success after leading 4-1.
Four frames lasted more than twenty minutes and two of sixteen each, the latter providing a fine conclusion to the tournament in the form of a 126 clearance by Taylor. This gave him the highest break prize of £1,000 as well as £10,000 as the winner. Steve Davis walked away with £6,000 for being the runner-up.
Summary
The 1985 Kit Kat Break for Champions was a tournament that showcased the remaining champions from previous World Championships. The cream of the crop rose to the top and as usually is the case, it was the players that had the best form at the time that made the final. The Davis/Taylor final was an apt way to end this tournament and showed that Dennis Taylor could defeat Steve Davis for a second time.
