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The last few balls landed in my pocket with a thud. This is probably the best moment of all. The match is over, the opponent is doomed never to return to the table, before the trophy arrives, before the ticker tape drops, before the microphone, questions, signatures, and the promise of a lifetime to take a selfie. When you’re with strangers, you’re in a warm, fuzzy stasis where it’s just you and your cues, delaying gratification just a little bit.
Kyren Wilson’s long backswing swung back and forth like a pendulum, sliding over his bridge hand and past the white ball. After playing snooker for 30 years, putting hundreds of thousands of balls in and out of the pot, and sitting in a cushioned chair for days and days thinking, he finally got everything he wanted. I achieved the goal I always knew I had. He turned to his family and let out a cry of relief. Kyren Wilson, world champion.
He entered the final with absolute confidence. Until then, Wilson’s closest opponent was John Higgins in the quarterfinals, where he lost by five frames. David Gilbert lost by six points. Joe O’Connor lost by seven. Dominic Dale lost by nine. But the final itself was tense, nerve-wracking and often dramatic, with an 18-14 victory over an inspired second-half comeback from Jack Jones.
Jones won a close battle on the second day, but the real contest came on Sunday afternoon when Wilson jumped out to a 7-0 lead and won. Jones felt helpless and lost, like a man enveloped in a thick fog. When he emerged in the evening, he could finally see clearly, but from then on he was always running after me, only stopping.
There were countless turning points in this match, but there were two that I felt were particularly important. The first was in the final frame on Sunday night, when Jones knocked in a final red and a difficult black, leaving Wilson needing a snooker and all the colors. Wilson found the snooker and planted the colors after an all-out tug-of-war over the black. Jones looked pale as we shook hands. It was supposed to be 10 to 7 overnight. Instead it was 11-6.
And then, at the end of an uneventful Monday afternoon, there was a terrible frame. By this point both fighters were exhausted, like broken warriors leaning on each other just to stay upright in the 12th round. Jones missed a big chance and Wilson stumbled over the line, leading 15-10 into the night but could have caused some tension at dinner at 14-11.
When they returned, Wilson won the first frame of the night before Jones answered with a beautifully controlled century. Wilson hit a fluke off a respotted Negro to take a 17-11 lead, one away from victory, before dramatically winning the next game.
Then came the surprising Jones attack, which freed him from his new role as a dead man walking. He rattled off his next three frames and played some great snooker in parts. That included a highly absorbing 147 attempt that collapsed leaving him with three reds. The score was now 17-14, and Wilson was clearly rattled.
But he finally got his chance and burst into tears after a hug from Jones.
“My mom and dad sacrificed their lives to remortgage and get me here,” Wilson said. It’s a family achievement, and Wilson’s older brother was also acknowledged after accompanying him on tour as coach, publicist, friend and right-hand man.
“[Jones] It was very difficult,” Wilson added. “I don’t think there are as many people left in Wales who were rooting for him. It’s all down to them that it’s a great atmosphere. Me and Jack have come through the junior ranks. For Jack. This is his first final, let alone a world final, so he’s playing in a great way and I’m sure he’ll be back.”
This wouldn’t qualify as a classic tournament. Due to the smaller pocket, there were far fewer century breaks and far more missed balls. A record number of top 16 players fell in the opening round, with favorites Ronnie O’Sullivan and Judd Trump unable to reach the single table set-up that was supposed to play them out in an epic semi-final, when stars I lacked strength. .
Still, the conclusion feels neat and fulfilling, like a well-fitting glove. The bricks of Wilson’s career have been carefully laid over a decade of dedicated effort. He reached the Crucible for the first time in 2014. They then reached the semi-finals in 2018, where they lost to John Higgins’ Match Play North. And in 2020, he reached his first final at the empty, Covid-19 Crucible, with O’Sullivan ruthlessly winning 18-8.
Perhaps the fact that he was barely mentioned before this tournament wasn’t a bad thing. While he may have had a slow season by his standards, Wilson had all the ingredients, the experience to go deep and the hard lessons the ’92 graduate taught him. He stayed out of the spotlight and continued to run under the radar, rarely getting into trouble or upset on the way to the finals.
Snooker needs O’Sullivan, of course, but it also needs new champions and fresh faces. You only have to look at how Luke Littler transformed darts to understand what the extremely talented teenager is capable of in this game as well. At 32 years old, Wilson is certainly not the same, but he does signal the belated arrival of a new generation. Until 12 months ago, there had been no snooker world champion born in the 1990s. Wilson joins last year’s winner Luca Bressel, and now there are two.
Jones is of the same generation, and his time may come again. He is in his 30s and still has time to build on this experience. “I think he could have done better if he could have relaxed a little more in other tournaments,” he said this week. Perhaps that’s what he’ll take away from his marathon journey, which started with qualifying in mid-April and totaled 55 hours of snooker.
Still, Jones’ resume so far doesn’t suggest we’re looking out for the future king of the sport. This was his first final in a ranking tournament in his 10 years of trying. Every chance he missed at the table, every frame chance he missed, felt like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity was slipping through his fingers.
“Congratulations to Kailen and her family. They deserve it,” said Jones, who continued to smile and speak throughout the final. “If anyone deserved it he would, congratulations to them.
“It was an incredible tournament for me. About a month ago I played in my first qualifying match. It’s been a long month but I’m happy. I won’t say [I came in] With lots of hope. Basically, I thought, let’s do our best and see what happens. But when you play against someone with a solid all-around game like Kairen, it will be difficult to recover from such a deficit. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. ”