By Elliott west
Introduction
The World Snooker Trickshot Championship was a tournament that ran between 1991 and 2006 and was held in multiple locations. Steve Davis won the event in 1994, 1995 and 1997 and Poland’s Bogdan Wolkowski won the tournament a record six times. Played on snooker tables, the event was organised by Matchroom Sport and used a combination of judges scores and audience votes to determine the winner.
In 1996 the tournament was held in Sun City, South Africa, the third year in a row that it was held here and the last. In a hard fought competition, Canada’s Alain Robidoux emerged as the winner, compensating him for his poor performance in the 1995 event where he finished a disappointing seventh. His display in 1996 was full of variety and laughs and used this formula to his advantage and scored heavily in all the rounds as a result.
The Tournament
In a competition made up of Alain Robidoux, Tony Knowles, Cliff Thorburn, Paul Gerni, Peter Francisco, Robbie Grace, Steve Davis and Dene O’Kane, the tournament was divided into two sections, compulsory and freestyle with the compulsory part consisting of two shots – the Disappearing Shot and the Machine Gun Shot.
The freestyle section lasted ten minutes and marks were awarded by the three judges on the panel, made up of Barry Hearn, Chairman of Matchroom; Sam Louw, the vice-president of the International Billiards and Snooker Federation; and Billy Domingo, a senior executive of Sun International.
After the compulsories, Tony Knowles led the field with 44 points, two points ahead of Alain Robidoux while the titleholder, Steve Davis could only manage 17 points and had to think about packing his suitcase instead as his title sunk into the sunset.
The dark horse of the tournament was the USA’s Paul Gerni. Paul from Kansas and traditionally a pool player, was forced to do most of his pre-match practice on a pool table. So it was impressive that he finished the event in joint third place with Cliff Thorburn on 81 points.
The flip side of this impressive performance was that of Dene O’Kane’s. Dene, who was a late replacement for Mike Massey, who had previously won the tournament but couldn’t attend because he couldn’t renew his passport due to the closure of the government offices. O’Kane arrived at the tournament, bleary eyed and jet lagged on the first day of the event after a long haul flight and paid the cost by finishing in last place with 62 points.
So in the end, the prized possession of the Dr Martens World Trickshot Championship went to the 35 year-old, world No 20, Alain Robidoux with a highly-polished performance. He wowed the crowd with his eye-catching finger-spinning and four ball juggling routines. Also his impersonations of Steve Davis and Cliff Thorburn.
Results
Summary
Although not classed as classic snooker, this tournament was a chance to bring pool and snooker players, past and present together, to showcase their skills, impress the judges and entertain the crowd. A long-running event that had a multitude of winners, Alain Robidoux donned the crown on this occasion and produced the goods, thanks to hard work and crafted skills.
